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tenderloinfillet · 2 months

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ART FIGHT 2024 WRAP UP

Soul the Brephlosion 05.07.24

@neonhuo

I was learning the basics of clip studio and had lots of fun with the stamps and shading. Correcting the sketch in mirror mode was actually fun and I ended with a lineart that looks natural and good.

When drawing a feral creature from this pose I end up in a fish-eye lens. I embraced them for this picture.

Background ironically took most of the days with this. When making that small cityscape I had to color my citybrush and add green screens for the windows. I made a distorted sky layer and overlaid it on that greensceen so it looks like they're reflecting. I downloaded an entire 3D model of countryside from Sketchfab but it can't be seen at all through the foliage.

I took inspiration from classic Ukiyo-e prints in the red color of the ground. I'm proud of the autumny/brown-grass-summer the nature at background has. I constructed the forests rock formations with the idea this cliff was an ancient seaside beach millions of years ago.

I did not use a single gradient layer in this image.

Alex Sokolov 24.07.2024

@chocodile

I had a small trip and a whole con when I was drawing her, so it took two weeks from start to finish.

I learned how to make the most use out of the 3D reference tools. I rendered the mountains by hand, but it was unfeasible to repeat with mansion. I don't have Clip Studio Ex, so I did my own "LT-Conversion" at Krita. I used the window reflection trick again.

Alex's pose ended a little stiff because it was my first time both drawing her and using the 3D mannequin tool. Next time I would use more lively brushes. In this piece she is drawn with the same feng shui brushes I used for the background.

There is enough shading to count as "fully shaded" in artfight, but it is mostly in the brush strokes or implied in things like the hallway having a darker color. The shading would only be noticeable if removed. I went for a rendering style with vibes of an 2010s Hasbro cartoon through the pastel colored outlines and overall flatness.

I was using the default resolution so the piece looks kind of pixelated. It would look very different with a 600dpi resolution.

Alex isn't exactly the happiest person, so I gave her a camera stare that fits the early 1900s style setting. I used lots of gradients to soften the colors so they would not look too digital. The sky had a grading issue so.

This piece feels like something that I could revisit in the next year or four.

Dragon Boy Kam 01.08.24

@drabonboykam

I don't remember how I found him, but I chose him since I just wanted a hot anime boy that would be easy to draw. My first idea was to draw him flat colored on simple temple background. Then I added the magic soap bubble wings. They took so much effort I decided to not draw the temple background.

Instead I chose to make it an Y2K undersea cafe. That added to some 7 hours of work to finish it all. There are 10s of gradient, mutliplication, glow addition etc layers. The backgrounds chrome color itself comes from overlayed color gradients.

I added an infobox and overlays so it kind of looks like an reference sheet. However, it's not functional as one. It's more like a big trading card in design.

I like how cohesive it turned out. I switched to using 600dpi and that made things a lot smoother.

Madame Tilly 03.08.24

@trashcamell

I wanted to give this a playful kinky aura and I think I succeeded in capturing a mix of both foreboding and exciting aura. I made the little torment toys look so colorful to make them to look both inviting and cute.

I put a desaturating gradient on the right side of the background to make your eyes focus and move to the Madame. The background still lays out the details of the scene, there's a pillory and there is an open closet where Madame Tilly has taken her implements from. The closed door gives a sense of being enclosed in the playroom with her.

The eyes are supposed to look down on the viewer, but to me it looks like she's kind of looking at the ground and I sort of painted myself against a wall with that. At least I can pretend she's making eye contact.

I posed her with the 3D planner but it feels like i have shed that obvious look at this point.

I added a lot of small fixes to the final merged layer. One of those I didn't notice until the last second were the horns.

I shocked my friends when I told them I rendered this for 24 hours straight.

The Trio of Orphans

0.3.08.24, 1 minute late

Alanita belongs to @DexieWu

Nala belongs to @jimen_salad

Trilogy belongs to @draciformes

At the last minute, I realised that maybe artfight could be more fun if I sketched a lot of new characters instead of spending days just rendering these megaprojects. So I sketched and "inked" three busts in just an hour. Characters I really wanted to draw but did not give the proper time.

I only had 5 minutes left to scan and crop and post these all. I only got one of them sent before the event ended.

In the end, making 4 big attacks made the event a little uneventful even though I learned a lot. I had a very good incentive to learn every nook and cranny of Clip Studio Paint and don't regret my unconventional playstyle because I had so much fun with it.

Maybe I could do one unhinged 300€ surprise gift art every month it's not artfight? I will think about that.

#artfight

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ask-whitepearl-and-steven · 4 years

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In these apparently trying times of "lack of content" I was wondering if we could get a glimpse behind the tablet and see how you write! Could you talk about your process and how you keep track of things and parse out your story? Do you storyboard or write rigorous notes? Is it all in your head? I am super curious about your system.

Oh yikes I’m about to disappoint a lot of people.

Okay, here’s the thing - I cannot physically keep notes because I get distracted and forget to write things down. I’ve tried keeping notebooks for WD!Steven stuff and I have come to accept that it’s only for show. I barely use it. I cannot use my memory on the effort of writing notes - I’d much rather use that energy to remember things in my head.

I brute-force everything through my mind palace. My mind... house... mindshack.

My process is simple:

Step 1) THINK

I constantly get asks that I feel might be good for the comics. I’ve made posts on this before but the main way I decide if I’ll use an ask is:

Is the ask addressed explicitly to Steven (or another character?)

Is the ask not giving away any fourth-wall-breaking information?

Is the ask actually ASKING Steven an open-ended question or TELLING Steven to do something?

If the ask is too vague (”so what do u like”) or gives away too much (“Steven don’t u think ur actually half-human? If Rose had a baby it would be half gem half human. Wouldn’t that be the same as u? You should ask Rose about a gem named Spinel I bet she would freak out!!!!!”) or if the ask is just pushing for Steven to do something instead of asking (”go to the moon base!”) then I almost always ignore it.

Step 2) Storyboard!

After choosing a question, I’ll sit and… stare at my desk/the wall/twitter without seeing it and instead storyboard the entire comic in my head. Sometimes this happens in a matter of minutes. Sometimes I’ll work it over in my mind’s eye for days before I like it. This includes the dialogue.

Yes, I do this while driving. I have an hour drive to work. No, I have never been in an accident. My autopilot works really well. I guess. Probably. I often have no memory of the actual drive itself but the comic gets written.

Step 3) Sketch!

Afterwards I go into my drawing program (MediBang Paint) and sketch out each individual panel on a layer. Sometimes the sketches are detailed. Sometimes they are just sloppy action lines to remind me what I’m going for.

I script in my head WHILE I’m drawing the sketches. I try out different lines as I go through each panel and see what fits the most. This sketching process takes about 3-5 minutes per panel.

Step 4) Lineart!

After I’ve sketched at least 50% of the comic, I go back in and start doing lineart. I will do this mindlessly - it is only at this point that I allow myself to listen to a podcast, or music, or have a YouTube video running while I draw. (I cannot sketch/storyboard/script with any sort of noise on. Has to be dead silent.)

The initial lineart process takes about 10 minutes per panel if the panel is simple like the one above. If I go through the process of adding necessary details, patterns, or have to create phone background detail, or draw a background in general, then it will obviously take longer.

If I do color comics, it takes 3 times as long which is why I hate coloring.

For the Lapis arc I also added tones. It was not as annoying as coloring, but it still took me twice as long as an average panel because there was so much layering to be done between the water/lapis’ wings/backgrounds. It was not fun.

Step 5) Dialogue

After I finish the lines for ALL the panels, or at least 50%, I start going back in and finally adding dialogue and details. I do the dialogue all at once because it allows me to view the flow more naturally. I end up reading and re-reading the panels several times to make sure there are no repeating words and that it flows more or less like a normal conversation would.

This takes about… eh… an hour or so for an average 20-panel comic?

The bulk of my editing is done at this stage. I will go back through and re-read the finished comic several times and try to weed out weird details or typos.

If I find none, I post it to Patreon, because it’s a guarantee that I will find 3 more immediately afterwards. That’s how posting art to social media works. Also, many of my Patreon patrons are usually kind enough to point out any typos I’ve missed. (MediBang doesn’t have a spellcheck so don’t judge me too harshly…)

And that’s….. it. I post to Patreon, make any last-minute fixes if I have to, and then queue everything to tapas and tumblr.

And then I immediately begin to worry about the next comic. Because… that’s how it works.

I understand it’s not exactly a professional process. That’s because I’m not a professional! I’m self-taught, and this comic is meant to be for fun, not for profit. If I make a Season-finale comic or a season-start comic, I typically go through the same steps, except I add thumbnailing to the mix (drawing tiny copies of the pages on post-it notes to see how many pages I can fix it to.)

Hope that was… educational? I don’t know. Either way…

#Anonymous #chekhov answers #process #how to #faq

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scribbleshanks · 3 years

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9, 10, and 25 for the artist ask thing? Hope your day is going well :D!!

Oh hello! :D Nice to see you!! ^^

I actually answered all of these questions before if you'd like to take a look back at the previous asks, buuut to tell you the truth I would like to expand on a couple thoughts that I don't think I included before; I hope that's okay :)

I said I can draw for about 5 hours in a single day, and that's true, but only when I'm in tip top drawing mood, and that means after a good warmup.

I've found that I benefit greatly from doing warmups, and though I once complained a lot about it when I first started to try them, I since learned that I would rather do a lot of sketchy circles and lines than to go straight for a sketch that would take me a good hour or so of cleaning up (which infuriates me because I want a clean and concise sketch for the lineart stages, grrr).

I underestimated the power of warmups 0_0; I personally draw a ton of little beans and spidermans because they help keep me on my toes about my sense of anatomy and gesture. On top of that there’s also lots of shading boxes full of different values so I can work my way into revving up for shadows, and that reaaaally helps my brain get ready for a good detailed cloak full of folds and creases.

After a good 15 minutes of warmups, I feel very comfortable easing into a high effort drawing that would require my full concentration for the next few hours (with breaks in between, of course). On days like this, I can draw for a good 5 hours.

There are days when I can't manage ten minutes of drawing or warmups, and that's okay! I take the edge off by playing video games or reading to let my drawing jitters rest.

10.

I mentioned that I've gotten more confident thanks to learning from my Hollow Knight fanart and from studying resources that provided guidance, and I want to explain a little more on the latter.

I have not taken many classes involving the technical side of art, so I'm very used to being intensely self taught. My learning process is largely based on observation, feeling, and intuition without the monitoring or guidance of a more experienced artist to help. This in of itself is not a bad thing, because it takes many self taught artists a lot of work and time to hone their craft without that same structure, and that's very difficult. My particular struggle with being self taught, however, is trying to shake off any bad habits that I developed, which I’m still trying to do.

Being aware of my bad habits and of my struggles made it hard for me to want to learn, and that took a hit to my confidence for a long time.

Wanting to improve on my Hollow Knight fanart, however, gently encouraged me to seek online help, and I'm glad I did.

I feel better about confronting my weaknesses while acknowledging my strengths, and I didn't used to do that before 2021 :)

25.

I mostly listen to music when I draw, and even then I'd rather listen to an hour long video of someone playing video games than music.

Silence is near insufferable to me, and I find it funny that I can focus less when I have nothing to listen to as opposed to being incredibly laser focused when I have someone yapping in my ear in the background.

I think the only time I would have preferred drawing in silence was when our neighbors had two plump chickens in their backyard, and I would have listened to them pecking around the ground for seeds. Bird’s gotta bird.

Not...that the chickens have anything to do with your ask, but I do kinda miss those them.

I also hope your day is going well! :)

#artist ask

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mcrmadness · 4 years

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Madness draws: Behind the Scenes of the latest Farin&Bela pencil drawing.

Aka the one that’s also my icon, even when that was a big risk to take because normally I start hating the photos I have once drawn, especially if I have failed miserably. This is how the drawing itself turned out:

ATTENTION: The original post about that drawing, with better image, behind this link.

This post is solely about the process itself with lots of pictures and also plenty of gifs, because I promised to do one if people would like to see that and I got some comments saying that they’re looking forward for that. So, here’s now that post!

For starters I have to apologize for the terrible quality that is the photos. I used my phone camera only and never thought about posting them, I just took them as a reference for myself and to show the progress to a friend and only after finishing the drawing I noticed that the angle of the camera causes a huge impact on the perspective of the drawing, so I sometimes might have done useless work when I thought some perspective was wrong when it was actually the photo that was wrong and not my work! I mean, take a look at these photos of the finished piece:

You see that? I realized this when I took maybe the second photo of the Farin sheet and looked at it and couldn’t believe my eyes because I didn’t remember drawing his torsto THAT small! And then I looked at the drawing and was like “wtf???” because it looked nothing like in the photo and then it hit me...

Also, another thing that I learn was that I might need to pay more attention to the perspective of the whole thing also because when I draw, I sit at the table so I am constantly seeing the drawing from my perspective instead of looking at it from above so that’s probably also going to affect the way I draw. I try to keep that in mind in the future so I can avoid redrawing things again and again just because my perspective is different than the reference photo’s.

Also the giant forehead of Farin’s in the photo on the right might have caused me to laugh a bit too much but anyway, let’s continue~ Or more like: let’s start for real this time.

Here’s the reference photo to y’all:

What I did in photoshop was to draw a line between them to see how I can divide the photo on two A4 papers. I had been thinking about this photo for some time already because it’s one of my favorites (but now I just feel cringy looking at it after I have drawn it... goddamnit!), and I got this idea that I could try drawing it on two papers in case I fuck up so I can start over or try again without having to do twice the work! Which was actually a good decision because this was the first version of Farin:

And it was awful. I also realized I had never drawn Farin’s face from he front. I have drawn him before from the side a few times but maybe once it came out actually good so that was why I decided to do the 2 paper method - because I knew it was not going to be an easy job! Bela is relatively easy to draw so I knew already that I would not have too many problems with that one.

I struggled with Farin’s eyes the most, at first.

It took me a while to figure out how to do that white line in his lower lid. Keep in mind that this was my first face portrait in over 10 years so I was very, very rusty and I just didn’t remember how to draw like anything anymore. (The photo is tilted because Bela’s face is a bit tilted and my hand can’t draw anything that is not straight [lol] so I have to rotate the photo in order to even draw the sketch of Bela’s eyes.)

So I took my sketchbook and tried to do some eyes...

I was still struggling so much here until I remembered about blending. And I didn’t have my hopes high but grabbed the eyeshadow applicators (my fave tool for blending) anyway, and switched to my other sketchbook in case the paper was the issue and:

Blending. It was all about blending! So with that in mind, I realized I can continue and I don’t need to do these in my old way, everything doesn’t have to have a lineart done but some of the job is done not with the pencils but with the eraser.

Anyhow, the previous Farin looked really bad and was too big as well so I just discarded that and started a new sheet because the old lines were not coming off properly anymore. I don’t remember if this is the old face or new but I think this might still be the old one:

Yes it definitely is the old because look at those lines! This is the new sheet:

And in the photo you can see one of my pencils - I use Derwent Graphic pencils, it’s a 12 pencil set with very soft pencils, starting with H, F and HB and ending to 9B. With this one I used F, HB, B, 2B, 5B, 7B and 9B. The white pencil is actually my new love aka the eraser pencil Koh-I-Noor Hardmuth. It’s amazing, I recommend! I just didn’t order 10 new ones this other day. I actually used about 1,5 full eraser pencils on this drawing alone so that’s why 10.

Here’s a “little” gif of the process on Farin:

I felt crazy when I went for the shirt, and I felt like I was going crazy MEANWHILE drawing it but in the end I did it and I’m super proud of it!

Below is the reference photo, it was pain in the ass to follow all those lines with my eyes and try to find what was I drawing and where was I but I think I did good. That was a fun challenge.

Okay so, when I was done with the new lineart, I decided to go for the shading and blending because that’s what really makes the drawings to pop. I started with the left (his right, my left) side of Farin’s face because I’m right-handed, and in the first photo I had done just the left (right) eye and mouth and nose, but in the second there’s also the other eye done already:

Keep in mind this was not the last time I drew the eyes. Not even close.

Something was off with the right (left) eye so I had to do that one again and I noticed that when you blend but haven’t erased and cleaned it yet, it looks like a black eye :DDD So here’s the before and after images of that cleaning. (Cleaning = I draw, blend, erase, draw and blend more when needed and then erase again, and repeat this as many times as I need until it starts to look ready to my eye.)

So here Farin was “finished” but if you still remember the final piece or compare it to it, you might notice it looks quite different. And you’re right. But more about that later, because at this point I started to work on Bela.

It actually started really well - I also had to do the whole lineart again because it did not match the size of “finished” Farin. I don’t remember if this is the first or second eye but when I had drawn his eye for the first time, I noticed it was not in line with Farin so I had to redraw it. A gif of the progress:

What’s that brown paper I’m using, you may ask? Well I noticed that people have some sort of paper on top of their art to keep it from smudging and I have no clue what that is so here’s my poor artist recommendation: baking paper! I tested it and it works (if you just remember to keep it under your hand, that is...) so that is, in fact, baking paper! :DD

I have drawn Bela’s face a few times before and he’s just so much easier to draw. In fact I used 4-5 days on Farin but I managed to start and finish (this version of) Bela just in one day. And that means that out of 12 hours (because I literally used the whole day for drawing) I used maybe like... 5h or something on Bela. That’s how much easier he really is to draw.

I don’t know wtf is wrong with Farin’s face but he’s extremely difficult to draw and I’m not the only one who has been saying this. I guess he just looks so regular but still unique enough to be difficult to draw. Bela then again has features that are very unique and very... caricature-like? I mean that just by drawing his nose or chin you can make a comic book Bela look exactly like himself, and with more realistic style his eyes already do a lot, but Farin’s really the opposite. My comic book version of Farin is literally the most basic version I can draw, it’s how I draw those characters and the only thing that makes him look himself is the hair, and his nose in a side profile. So I think that’s why it’s so difficult to draw him because he doesn’t look too regular but still regular enough to make is a very challenging task to do properly.

So yeah, the same day as I started working on Bela, I was also “finished” with the drawing:

Also look at how different it looks like from this perspective:

With the reference photo open in photoshop and I don’t understand how Bela looks more like himself in my drawing than in the photo. Also when I showed the WIP to my brother, he said that I somehow had succeeded at making Farin look more like Farin than what he does in the photo even. It’s weird.

But we were still far from finished. I was going to use the fixative on this soon but it just kept snowing the whole week so I couldn’t so every time I walked past the drawings, I stopped to fix this and that. For days I kept telling myself “I’m done, I can’t do more than this, I can’t do better than this.” and considered the drawing finished but still kept fixing things. Every time I was “done” with the other drawing, I saw something to fix in the other one and once that was done, I felt like the first one wasn’t as good and had to fix something from it too. And that led to a cycle where the other drawing was always better than the other and the worse one needed to be fixed. In the end I was hating the whole process and myself and my skills and I was already ready to abandon this whole thing and call it a day and never ever show it to anyone “because I cannot draw”. The photo above, here’s a list of things I redrew after that:

Bela’s eyes, the right (left) one at least twice.

Bela’s nose.

Bela’s mouth a couple of times.

Farin’s eyes x588045028520

And a list of things I kept fixing and fixing:

Bela’s chin.

Bela’s neck shadows.

Bela’s hairline.

Farin’s whole face was tilted so I tried to fix that.

Farin’s face was too wide, which meant also partially redrawing the ear.

Farin’s hair was too long and wide too.

Farin’s nose.

Farin’s mouth might be the only thing I drew only once and I’m actually still extremely proud of how it came to be. I did the lips solely with blending so that was super exciting to notice how I can use it for drawing and don’t need the pencils for everything!

During Bela’s eyes and nose and mouth especially I was hating myself so much and I felt like I was taking the risk of ruining the whole thing and a few times I was certain that was what I had just done too, until I somehow was able to save it again. But because of that, I wasn’t able to make Bela’s mouth any lighter anymore, the color wasn’t just coming off the paper so had to use what was there and make it look like it’s how it’s supposed to be, too.

Here’s a gif about those changes on Bela - the first one has the old eyes and nose, the others have minor changed on the nose and mouth:

(The blacks probably don’t get any blacker in reality, I did add more color to it all the time but mainly it’s just the lighting and my phone camera changing the brightness.)

I did the final details on his nose without even using the reference photo anymore. The photo didn’t seem to make any sense anymore at all so I was just using my mechanical pencil and the blending tool and eraser to make is look better. To my eye it looked more like a very flat nose with a big tip of the nose and he doesn’t have a flat nose and I tried to get rid of that illusion. I still feel like it makes him look bit weird but I’m not entirely sure how. Maybe it was because of my improvisation, idk...

So, Bela was then finally finished for the last time. In the Farin piece his left (right) eye had been bugging me the whole time and I didn’t want to touch it but still I felt like I have to do something about it because it was bugging me way too much. I then figured I could draw the eye line by line and take a photo of it each time to see if it looks right already or not, maybe I could then avoid doing all the phases before I was sure what to think about it. I mean, now the only way to see if it was correct was to draw e.g. an eye from start to finish, I couldn’t see from just the lineart or unblended eye if it was in the right spot etc. And here’s that progress on a gif:

The gif about only the eye would look so nice if Tumblr didn’t make the gifs so HUGE - this one is actually only 300px or 400px or something:

Apparently I also wasn’t happy with the other eye because:

But good thing is: I really enjoy drawing eyes. I love seeing them to “come alive”, my favorite part was to eraser a bit of the color on the iris to make them look like they are actually shiny! It feels like something so small to do and yet it makes a huge impact on the drawing!

And here’s yet another gif of the whole Farin sheet with all of the changes, including the last changes that made his head narrower, and less tilted and more in line. Look at the left side of his head especially to see that:

I can also see his nose changing between the first few photos. I keep forgetting about that but yeah, I also fixed that a little at some point.

And last but not least, the whole drawing in some sort of a timelapse gif:

Last two are the same but just a photo and the scan of the finished drawing. I still keep seeing things I would do differently but no can do, I already used fixative on it, also to keep myself from obsessing with it any more :D And to use it as a study of some sort. I have never been able to draw a perfect pencil drawing and this isn’t one either. I probably never can draw perfect drawings from references.

I do enjoy the whole shading and blending process, so much so that when I was editing these photos, I just wanted to start drawing something so bad but I also figured that I start to lose motivation when I get to the point where everything should be finished but I just can’t make it perfect. Like the current WIP I have, all I should do is to get the proportions and perspective and the lines of their faces correctly and I would be ready but it feels more like a superpower some people possess and I’m not one of those. I don’t know what is it but I just feel that I cannot see. I don’t know how to explain it, but I can’t see what I try to do and somehow keep drawing everything the wrong way. Just like in this post’s drawing too. There’s still things that are wrong and I know what it is but I don’t know how to solve it. My hands just don’t listen to me and they can’t do what I think they should. I also think the reason I cannot draw perfect copies of photos is because you can always see my “handprint” in them. If I copy a photo, it will look like a photo and not like a drawing made by me. So I believe that in my drawing there’s always a part of me visible and I’m not entirely sure if it’s a good thing or not. On bad days it’s not a good thing, obviously. On good days? Well I guess it’s good then because it just means I have my own style which I really should appreciate. But I wish I had my style only when I want it to be visible, but I can’t control it. Just like I cannot write text by hand that would look like it was written with a computer, so I guess I should just try to get used to it, no matter how much it’d bug me sometimes.

#mcrmadness draws #mcrmadness draws: behind the scenes #dä fanart #die ärzte

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infriga · 7 years

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@ancientouroboros FLATTERY WILL GET YOU absolutely everywhere I drew an entire picture just for you. Actually I drew two because the first time I tried to record the process Bandicam shit itself halfway through without me realizing until I was already finished. Which is why I made the starry Stan pic.

Here’s the video and a description under the readmore:

youtube

Hopefully it isn’t too fast. It took longer than expected, and I didn’t want it too be too long, but I can upload a slower one if anyone wants me too. Basically my process consists of:

1) Having a video in the background to help me focus, usually Achievement hunter or something similar. Something I can listen to and only have to check back on occasionally. I have a hard time drawing in silence unless I’m in a public place like at uni. 2) Work flow. The reason I use photoshop primarily is because I know all the shortcut keys and it allows me to switch between tools really fast. I tend to stick to something I know because I like to have a flow and being familiar with my tools helps with that. 4) Cheating. If I can achieve an effect without painstakingly creating it from scratch I will. I use filterforge myself (even though it’s expensive it has a HUGE filter library), but there are lots of other options. I also have a lot of special brushes I use for textures and other stuff. And if you’re like me and you have shaky hands I highly recommend LazyNezumi! It’s a stabilizer that works with Photoshop, and It also has other cool features like perspective line rulers.

My sketches are messy as hell, as you’ve probably noticed. I��m usually trying to get a feel for the pose without getting too stiff. I like to use the pencil tool instead of the brush tool, since I work at sizes big enough that it doesn’t look weird, and it makes colouring a lot easier. Of course this video also shows how much of a god damn perfectionist I can be, erasing and redrawing and erasing and redrawing, and resizing and flipping, and backtracking, etc. I cut out like half an hour of me redrawing his feet like 10 times. God I hate feet!

Sometimes I get lucky and lineart turns out how I want right away, but sometimes it takes several tries. Because of this I like to space my lineart out on multiple layers to let me isolate elements more easily. Sometimes I’m a little layer happy tbh, like I needed 21 layers just for the sketch of my Stan WIP I posted a while back. If it’s something quick for a response or a joke it’s not so bad, when it’s a bigger picture, or sometimes just by chance, I can get really anal. How organized my layers get is completely random. Some pictures are meticulously labelled and named, and some are a complete mess. I also like to flip the picture a lot to check for weirdness or inconsistencies. If I can’t get something to work I’ll often just scrap it and redo it from a slightly different angle or with a different pose. I’ll sometimes have a series of action snapshots and chose which one I like the best. I do this with colours too where I save a bunch of different looks/styles, and try to figure out which one I like best by cycling through them.

I have a folder filled with slightly different coloured versions of one pic that was particularly difficult for me to decide on.

When it comes to colouring sometimes I have it planned out in advanced, but generally I just go with what feels natural. I will often fiddle with hue, saturation, colour balance, and all sorts of things, with different composition modes for layers and stuff like that, just to see if I can add some extra pop to whatever I already have.

So now you can blame @ancientouroboros for both pictures and this wall of text. If there’s anything you guys want me to elaborate on let me know cause I’d be willing to make a more in depth post on a certain topic. Here’s the video of the lineart for the other pic before it crapped out, for anyone who’s interested.

#gravity falls #stanley pines #fanart #timelapse #art process #ancientouroboros

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midnightshowing-acm420-fall2019 · 5 years

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Week 16 - Alex - Dénouement

--- Opening Thoughts:

Here we reach the end of the story of this project; the final knot, which took so many threads to tie, yet seemed not long ago to be little more than a tangled mess. This week, our group achieved more than what seemed achievable, given the time constrains and pressure. And although so much could have gone wrong, this was truly a very ‘right’ conclusion to an epic semester-long project. I’m so very, very thankful, and proud, of each and every member of our our group - without whom this film would never have been possible. And I’m honored to have been a part of what may very well be one of the finest films produced here in ACM Animation since its inception. I also would like to give a huge thanks to all the colorists who made the production pipeline go so much smoother and faster - sacrificing their own time and effort to be a part of something amazing! I also would like congratulate our terrific voice actor Justin Bendo, for his incredible work as the voice of Angel. And to our composer Joshua Namba, who breathed life and vigor into our film through his music.

--- Weekly Deliverables

For my work this past week, a lot has happened, as most of our group can probably agree to. It’s difficult to bring to memory every individual thing, but the core tasks were these: Coloring Sq13s6, a shot I originally roughed for. Although the final version would go on to have some major alterations to Angel, I’m happy to see it least one rough of Phantom I did pretty much stuck all the way to final:

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Colored Sq13s16; took a heck of a long time even using pre-programmed inputs for the coloring process. But it turned out good, and due to me needing to use base layers for the characters, Gavin came up with an interesting blending mode for the Old Man which we can see in the final film:

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For the next two shots I finished line from last week, plus color and shading for this week. They turned out pretty good I’d say:

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We ran into some technical issues when it came to rendering out certain files, and one in particular that comes to mind is Sq9s16, as imaged below.

I don’t know how it was possible to even work on a file this large on Photoshop, with the hardware we have. It was so big that most of our group’s computers couldn’t even open it. Mine struggled big time to load it, let alone render it as an uncompressed .mov. I had to clear almost all my ram, and even then it crashed before finally managing to render it, which only took around 10 minutes (for one shot mind you,) and then uploading it which took a solid three and a half hours.

This one file almost stopped our whole production. It was amazing, kind of hilarious, and a bit scary, but we managed to pull through. I added a clipping mask to the fire’s lineart to make it orange.

The next thing which ate up a lot of time and energy this week was sound. Basically, I expected have sound done in maybe 5 or 6 hours over the weekend. Turned out it required almost two full days to finalize. Me and Gavin met up to discuss corrections and adjustments, and after some last minute feedback, all the retiming work was done, and we got an incredible audio track. Even though it was a heavy tax on my very tight finals week schedule, I think having those two days to work on it really raised the fluidity and creativity to provide something almost of a remaster to the animatic audio track we’ve been using up to this point. The premiere file itself is kind of a convoluted mess:

Nevertheless, it gets the job done, and taught me a whole lot about sound editing and design over the course of the semester (except organizational skills.)

--- Last Reflections

This semester has been such a momentous one for so many reasons. If 320 taught me “how to work on animation,” then 420 taught me how to work on animation for real. The jump is so tangible, not necessarily in a “workload” sense (although that may be part of it) but more so as an appreciation for the art of animation itself as a collaborative medium, and a visually exploratory one. I am much more aware now of every element that goes into a piece of work, and I think I can see the great value in attempting to discerning the purpose behind everything we see in Animation, as with any art piece. While it was easy to get away with seemingly arbitrary choices of shape, color, motion and such in the past, it has become especially necessary now to be deliberate in making choice, since the workload falls on someone else’s shoulders.

- Adjustments to the Process in the Future:

Not all of this is necessarily in my control, nor should this be held against anyone or any part of the film making process here, since after all we’re learning and exploring how to work in teams with new techniques. That being said, one thing I would aim to sharpen in the future is the pre-production estimates of workload times/levels, as well as the overall film length. I think I speak for most of us when I say that the film’s scope grew a lot over the course of the semester. And I’m not saying having a large or ambitious idea is bad - that’s my favorite kind of project! But it can become a bit of an issue when it grows to such a scope that we are having to recruit outside helpers and dedicate most or all of the 24 hours we have in a day to be able to manage finishing on time. Basically, just have a more rigid plan from the start, and be very cautious towards anything that adds unnecessary levels of complexity. That’s something that can be addressed at the animatic stage. Beyond that, being more cautious with the estimates of time and energy requirements per shot would help. I noticed that some (or maybe most) of the shots required quite a bit more time than originally intended to be roughed, lined, colored, and shaded. That’s not taking into consideration all the revisions they may go through as they are reviewed, given feedback, and trade hands between group members. Production schedule-wise, it’s much better to undershoot I think, and have a lot of extra time to hammer out details, maybe refine shots, and properly apply feedback versus feeling the dread of being behind schedule and cutting years from your life due to the amount of sleep lost to try and catch up. A general rule of thumb is that specificity helps. Despite how meticulously we planned, we would still occasionally run into issues such as what color a prop might be, or how the shading might change between environments. Or another example might be how a character’s physical attributes such as stretchiness might change or remain consistent throughout the film. Although these were minor things that got addressed in the end, baring those details in mind in the future would be of great help I think.

- Words of Advice to Future 420 Students

You have three options: either become a cyborg, learn to hate sleep, or adapt to being powered by copious amounts of coffee every day. As for me, I took something from all three of those this semester. Joking aside, these are some general pointers I would give to incoming 420 students: -Choose your story and teammates carefully: This semester can be as fun (or unfun) as you make it to be. No matter what though, the people you have at your side are the people you’re stuck with. Hopefully by this point in the major you would be familiar with your teammates and their individual strengths and quirks, so if you’re having trouble picking a team in the beginning, go with the people you feel are the most self-determined, hard working, and whom you can adapt to their mold (not necessarily vice versa.) If you hate your team, you will hate your semester. But if you love your team, it doesn’t matter how tough the work gets, because you can still come to class with a smile (a very dead inside smile.)

-Come in with a strong concept: Even if your idea doesn’t get picked, being able to receive other people’s ideas and represent them faithfully is vital to the overall success of the production. The better you understand the idea you are working on, the better prepared you will be to make it a reality. Also, simple designs and ideas tend to get picked more often. Keep that in mind when developing your idea.

-Diversity is a strength: Having a broad skillset on your crew is incredibly important. Ideally, everyone can functionally perform any given task on the production. But having specialists assigned certain specific tasks is very helpful. It serves to balance the workload more or less equally among members based on their strengths, and the result is a product where you have good work reflected in all aspects of the film.

-Be prepared to change your schedule: Unless your group’s idea is ridiculously simple, chances are you will be losing sleep, possible questioning your choice of major, and being forced to change both when and how you are available to people and things you care about in the world outside the borders of your computer screen. It is not a joke to say that this course can affect your health, your diet, and maybe even the way you view other people - or even yourself! If done properly, this class should challenge you in the way you live and handle work. It should force you to adapt to an animator’s lifestyle. Not that you need to forsake life to be an animator necessarily, but to give you a taste of what the industry may demand of you through certain seasons of life.

-Be able to take a joke: By the end of the project, you’re going to be throwing shots at each other left and right. It is a crazy, whacky time - and you may find yourself forgetting this is all for a school project. Learn to enjoy acknowledging your own weaknesses, and have fun pointing out the flaws in others, when its appropriate. This makes the experience not only more enjoyable, but in a strange, ironic way it makes us become comfortable with our shortcomings, and enables/pushes each other to genuinely improve our skills, and ultimately create a better product.

-Communication is key: You need to keep up with your group. Period. If you are our of the loop for even a day, it can throw things off big time. Setup a chat group via text, setup a Discord server, or find some other means to talk to one another that is reliable. Even if you don’t always feel like chatting, just be ready when somebody needs you (which will happen quite a lot.) Also, having a system of file sharing such as Google Drive is indispensable. You may find yourself keeping certain tabs open and rarely closing them, just to check for updates and be able to send/receive files when you need them.

-Practice makes perfect: I don’t care how good or bad you think you are at animating up till this point; if you do your best in this class, you will grow. You may find yourself drawing in a different art style than you’re used to, and implementing work methods and software that you’ve never used before. And that’s wonderful! Be open to experimenting and exploring new styles of work. I’ve found that is a big part of what makes animation enjoyable and inexhaustible. Just when you feel like you’re set in your ways, the moment you step into something new, it’s a whole other world, and you just might find something you like about it.That opens the door to not only other ways of being creative, but on a practical level, makes you a much more viable component to a team when being considered for hiring. Don’t let the early hardships bog you down; with time and practice, there’s nothing you can’t do. -- Well that pretty much wraps up this last blog post and the semester for 420. The experience has been life altering, no joke. I have no regrets, and I’m so thankful to have had the chance to work so closely with everyone. In my experience, this class has been the difference between being an animation student and becoming a professional animator. Even though it was as a real challenge emotionally and physically, I would take the class again if I could, and I very much look forward to working with you all - my fellow animators - in our continuing classes, as well as our careers beyond. You all have been my family here while I’ve been without one since moving all the way out here for school.

Thanks to Brittany for teaching our wonderful class! And to everyone who has fought through this semester together and made it something special, right up until the very end. Until next time my friends, this is the Undercover Animator signing out.

#midnightshowing #acm420 #theend #coffeepower #i cry every time

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