how-to-scug

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Oohhh I'll note this down

Someone requested that we share our knowledge on how to draw slugcats, so here I am with this doodle. We like to use squashed circles to help shape their heads.

Don't ask us how we draw their bodies. We don't know either. Blobs.

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how to scug, but like, literally haha

im going to be honest, i dont think i landed on a solid design, but i tried this out, and i think i like it a lot! so heres the promised slug cat tutorial!

the program i use is firealpaca, and the pen i use is "paint 1985 square" set to 17 px

step 1!

turn off anti-aliasing.

this is optional, but for this i have it off,

step 2! pillow?

have you guys heard of the pillow method? well i just imagine a pillow. winged canvas did a video on youtube that you can find here, it can be helpful for this step. also i keep this step at a low opacity and on at all times, just to trace over

step 3! give em legs!

im not sure how to describe this step. its really just giving them legs, i like to think about it like drawing baggy pants that end tight at the ankle, you know? thats it for this step

step 4! cat.

dont mind the image title, for this step, i drew the ears, for this i drew them like a cats, and connected the legs to the head that i also had drawn. for the head, i have them a little cheek fluff, and a wide v shape for where the head is facing. if your good at drawing cats, your already better than me haha

by now i can turn off that layer in the beginning, but i wont because this is future me berating past me for forgetting i had it on

step 5! detail!

when i say detail, i mean i gave it feet (triangles, really) a super simple arm, a face, and fur! thr fur is, although optional and just the design im going with, is important to understand. theres a million tutorials on how to draw fur, but something i found important to understand is to try to draw fluidly.., i guess? its kind of hard to explain, but its helpful to understand organic shapes i feel to understand this step better. if you want a tutorial on how to draw fur, you can find it here, also by winged canvas

finaly, the-half-step-thats-sort-of-just-here-so-i-can-feel-like-i-finished-a-peice and thats shading!

i made a seperate layer for the shadows specificaly, and thats not to mess up the linework that i made before, and also because i kind of like blotchy shading. often though, i would suggest shading under the lineart layer. while shading this, i half thought about which direction the shadows should be, and half thought about the most common places i see others put shadows, and this was the result.

shadings my favorite part of the process, other than blocking out colors, fyi lol

and thats it! i hope this helps! a lot of the work i will be honest is drawing the frame/guidline layer in the beginning, as well as planning what the pose is and whatnot, so the pillow method should help a lot there i hope. it did for me at least!

i hope you guys learned from this! and if you didnt, tell me what i could have done better! i hope you have a great day!

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Thinking abt scug anatomy, with some doodles to try and make sense of it

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Hello, hope your having a great day!!

Do you have any tips regarding stylising slugcats in different ways?

HI thanks, i am indeed having a good day thanks for asking!

as for your question, im not entirely sure how to go about answering it, however i can give some tips for developing a style, just in general

do you have any artists you like? im sure a lot of you guys have heard the "take what you like about your favorite artist" speil, but i find its a little more that that.., a lot of times what i find myself doing is taking an image that i like, and well, trace it (its not just tracing work with me here lmao)

alternatively i draw against it, if that makes sense, like use a reference, which is also really helpful because im not relying on the image that much (especially because i cant focus on looking at the drawing and the picture at the same time, so usualy i just look at it and draw from memory, would suggest, sorry for the tangent tldr use reference sometimes too! dont just trace lol back to tracing though ig lmao)

for this im going to be using this image

and the program i will be using is firealpaca (its a nice free software i like using for digital art, but thats not important right now)

i start off with this generally, as you can see, the image is lower opacity, on a separate layer, and although its not rainworld, its the first thing i saw mildly interesting on pinterest lol

alright now i have the iddy biddy bits done, i traced over the general pose, and now im ready to move on.

here is where its a little more than tracing

i turn the original picture off, and lower the opacity of the traced version, and then just, draw over it i guess.

i like to try to think about how the body would, idk, fit there, like if i was there how would i look? would i be stiff? relaxed? so on and all that. the goal here is to learn from tracing it, not just trace mindlessly if you get what i mean. be mindful about what your drawing

anyway heres the next stage, as you can see i wanted to deviate from the original image, that way im not making a carbon copy of the image. i do think the image is pretty good for practice though, as its a pretty dificult pose (at least for me) and i can use the (albeit very little) knowledge i have on foreshortening on the arm, idk man its a really cool image and i like how challenging it is, i really had to struggle to make it look right.

i wont be adding any more detail to this, but its generaly how i go about learning and tracing art

side note, im sure you've heard of this before, but dont post art you traced as yours, and if you do, add the original image before your drawing, and give a disclamer

awf man i lost my point, but i put too much effort into this to delete all of it

anyway im gonna be making something else to make up for this im sorry lmao

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I'm working on something guys I promie

This is a small help for artists. You will not understand anything, since everything is written in Russian, but I will say that on the first art, the construction is simple shapes, and on the second, the direction of movement is lines

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Short sweet Gourmand fat tutorial. I've been meaning to make this for a while because back then Gourmand kept being excluded in group drawings (and I think that's still a thing) and it kinda bothers me sometimes. One reason I theorize is that it's hard for some people to draw fat characters.

That sure is a good reason but I don't think it holds much when you can sink just as much time studying the other characters who also have different design elements (especially with saint in which I observe that some people have trouble drawing fluff but idk i can't make anymore assumptions beyond this xd). A lot of people in the fandom love Gourmand and adore them, but drawing them? That's different.

Anyway enough personal rambles. It's never too late to learn or at least try! There's plenty of online tutorials and references aside from my own. So I encourage you to look into them.

Anthro mands owned by: @mildeleef @soggymuppet @pookapufferfish @infinite-echoes @woopdeloopei

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how do you draw scats so good

teach us your ways

this is literally just how i draw them. GOOD OL SIDENOTE HOWEVER, i've been drawing for wayyy over a decade, and drawing seriously for like 5 years, so i have a bunch of experience and generally know my shapes.... i don't need to sketch because i've been drawing slugcats for around a year and they're super simple... on the note of shapes though, this is how i think about it subconciously and draw it after that

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heehee

someone asked me a while ago how I draw slugcats and I wanted to make a huge guide going into how I rationalize their anatomy but I’ve been so busy w college I haven’t been able to touch it in like a month! So I decided to post these few notes I had! One day I’ll get back and make an entire guide but for now have these little notes :)

Animals I tend to gravitate towards for slugcat references are: otters, weasels, cats, and monkeys!

Also this isn’t me saying this is what their anatomy is, more so how I think of it and what landmarks I use when I draw!

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dont mind me, forgetting to do this, sorry!!

so, first thing, its important to remember that your sketch isn't always final, and things can change often throughout the processes, that's just a general thing i want to point out.

second, your gesture sketch

this is something i struggle with a lot, so seeing like this is a real eye opener! in it you have the general idea down, as you can see gourmand and a slugpup are there, and gourm is holding something. gesture drawing is something new to me, so i will try to explain it more once i get it down, but this is a good place to start i think!

third, you made a couple iterations of this throughout the drawing, which is something i think is very neet, and also pairs well with my first point. nothing special i want to say here, i just want to point it out!

last, and maybe the shortest point here, you get your point across very well. from the start of the drawing, you have your full intent of the piece already layed out, which i can only assume means that you plan out your drawings at least a little bit beforehand, so to add to the checklist, we have

1: your first sketch most likely isnt your final sketch (it can be though)

2:gesture drawings can lay out the intent of the piece, and is a good way if getting your ideas onto the board (this is two and four combined)

thanks for responding, and thank you for reading!!!!

how do you draw slugcats, or just anything in general? Also would you be ok if i rebloged your response to @how-to-scug?

Reblogs are fine! I don't know that I have a fully established slugcat production process, but can try and give an overview of how it is right now.

Some pieces, like this one, there's a very clear idea in my head of what I want to draw and how to do it. So I don't bother planning anything out beforehand — just draw, erase, draw some more.

With others there are a whole bunch of sketches before I reach a layout I like.

Walking through a full piece, from beginning to end:

1. Gesture sketch, more about layout and feeling than anything else.

2. Actually sketching out the characters, but not worrying too much about overlapping lines or anything. The previous sketch is kept visible, but on a very low opacity — it's there as a reference, not something to trace over.

3. Rough line art.

4. Cleaner and more coherent line art (gourm has a neck now, pup's legs make sense).

5. Detailing! This is the fun part, especially fur — tiny little pairs of parallel lines are a good way to gesture at fuzziness, as is erasing parts of the outline and filling them with many light, short strokes. The aliased brush and small canvas size make it look frizzier than I think it would at higher resolutions.

Gourm's shading is kind of an experiment, but I think that outline + hatching combo works quite nicely.

6. Final cleanup pass.

At this point I'd usually have to worry about drawing a background — but this is a scug question, and gets a scug answer! ;)

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huh, it might have been helpful to turn on asks before i tell people their open, huh

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scuffed iterator tutorial!

during this, I attempt to explain how to draw iterator puppets, keep in mind, this isn't a rulebook or anything to follow by heart, rather a reference for how things tend to work. unlike my previous tutorials, i made this one myself, so apologies if its not up to standard, i already hold my own grievances over it. (please trust me I'm usually good at this)

so this first section is going to be the full image, a step by step tutorial, but if its confusing, I'll try to explain it under.

so the first thing I want to bring up, is in step 3. when I wrote that, I wanted to show how the marking would usually go on after the eyes, and I do that because I often mess up and don't leave enough room for the eyes if I draw the marking first.

the next thing I want to bring up, is how I drew the body, and you might have heard of this before, but i break it up into shapes, and that is because it helps me understand how to go about drawing it in a 3D perspective, and it simplifies things to a manageable level (i get stressed easily, so this is important) ((I also forgot to mention this, but the antennae aren't based on anything specific, and can also be anything you want! it is your drawing after all! in this however, I used fivepebbles as a base, only because its the easiest to draw, and gets the point across))

(don't mind me, snipping around the rest of the tutorial)

finally, and most importantly, how I draw fabrics or flowy stuff.

this one i actually learned from a clothing designer, although i don't think i implemented it as well as i had hoped here, it does get my, and her point across.

when making that curve in fabric, you want to make a sort of wave. I find it easier to loosen my wrist when doing this, to get into a kind of flow, that way I go softer on upstrokes, and not as much on down strokes, giving the illusion of depth! (that little bubble as a separate image below)

that i think should conclude the tutorial. please let me know if i missed anything (and i mean that!) or if there's anything else you want me to add. also feel free to send me asks for tutorials *you* want to see, as I'm running out of ideas fast!

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very important thing to keep in mind while drawing is that others level does not raise the bar for your level, and if you want to draw something but unsure how to go about it, sketch out a thumbnail or dissect what it is you want to draw, like breaking it down!

by the way, 5p tutorial coming soon! Keep an eye out!

Have you ever wanted to draw something but you fought due to your skill level at the time you decide not to do it

Definitely that has happened… it's easy to get discouraged by other people's art, I think.

I don't know that I decide not to start things very often these days, so much as I'll jump into it and then get stuck from not knowing to do that one part of it — backgrounds, strange angles, hard surface contours, centipedes (so many legs…) — but I guess you can't actually know if a project is viable without feeling it out first, sketching a few thumbnails, that kind of thing. I have WIPs right know I don't know how to finish in a way that looks good; but a shelved project can always be resuscitated later, when you understand the problem more — an idea left for Future You™ might just sink down into the bog forever.

Hope that helps?

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school is starting back up, so expect fewer updates

sorry, but I'm 1 guy, making these isn't all I have to look after, but thank you so much for the support, and keep drawing!!!

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hey! thanks for responding! there are a few things i would like to mention that hopefully will help people understand a bit better. obviously this person has had a lot of experience in finding their style, so dont take any of this as the rule, as you have to develop your own skill as well!

first. this is a really nice description of your processes. i have noticed that you described how you "sketch" in a couple big strokes here:

and i think its important to mention that a lot of other artists do this when they have enough experience with working with slugcats. if you look closer though, you notice how you already have the motion of the pose, as seen here:

second, we see again how they broke down the creature (even if it was subconsciously) this is again, after years of leaning how to draw presumably. the example shown here:

if you pay attention, you can notice that the location of each section is broken down roughly into halves and quarters, the first half being broken into the head, and neck and chest (this is because they draw their mascot taller than average, the average being survivor) and the lowest half being broken into the waist, and legs (I'm not entirely sure how to describe this lol)

third thing, i want to point out how you draw faces, and more importantly, the eyes (mind the goofy recreation)

you break the eyes into 2 ovelesk shapes, which is a very interesting way of simplifying things! i also want to take this time to bring up how you color!

when you colored this, you limited yourself to maybe 1 or 2 colors for most of the body, saving the detail for when everything else is "blocked out"

you can see this especially with the feet, as you only added the color after you finished getting the big colors out of the way (the face not included)

i think this is a very important thing to keep in mind when doing non-complex drawings, like slugcats, as it helps ground you almost to the task at hand. this is something i especially struggle with.

overall though, a very solid way of drawing, and i look forward to seeing what you make next!

as always though, if you think i missed anything, or want to know more, my asks are open and i plan on answering any comments left on this post! thank you for being yourself and remember to keep drawing!

how do you go about sketching and coloring? it looks like you put a lot of effort into making things.

also, what art program do you use? im collecting them. so far i have 8

I love getting asks like this. And asks in general. Thanks again <3 Note: Each image should have a description with the transcript, assuming Tumblr functions.

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art study!

today, i will study how the artist for the dlc poster made for "the watcher"

in this, i break down the anatomy of the slugcat, and the general proportions

line break for watcher spoilers, and space efficiency

in the image above, you can see how del, or miimows made the watcher poster (the break down is speculation, and is just an anatomy breakdown, so its unofficial) in it, i describe how tall the slugcat is, and where everything is in relation to that (ie: the legs, the tail, the hips/waist, the chest and the arms)

in the image above, i highlight the shape of each main body part. the head is a circle (i will go into more detail in later tutorials) the chest under the head can be drawn as a box, or small rectangle. the hips are a wide triangle, made to fit the bean shaped legs (when drawing, I'd suggest drawing the position of the legs, as shown in image 1) and the tail... its hard to describe

in the final picture, i show off the silhouette and line of action, as well as the legs. in this, i suggest that the line of action is the spine, which can help with positioning the legs and keeping them in correct proportion

i hoped this helped! happy rainworlding!

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how to scug, a collection of help

I'm going to (hopefully) catalogue ways to make slugcats from the game we all love

during this adventure (if i continue it) i will make or find tutorials for how to draw these little critters, as well as other creatures from rainworld

how i do this will vary, but if you stick along, you may learn something!

asks can be used for art help, and criticism! this should be a safe space to talk and ask for help on rain world related art!

asks are open btw! dont be afraid to ask anything! ^.^