#another colouring method for the tutorial

[caught-a-dragonfly]

Yellow Eyes

[tofupixel]

🌿 How to draw simple grass for a game

Thank you kind asker I will make a tutorial below for grass. I'll do shrubs and trees in another one, because it's a different method and it got pretty long.

🌿 How to draw grass tiles: step-by-step

Each box is 16x16, the same size Stardew Valley uses. Make it tile (how to do it depends on your software) so we can see if our edges match up nicely.

Draw 1 simple blade of grass. Many options for shape but I like this one. Feel free to copy me directly

2. Give it a shadow. Wow !!!

3. Give it a highlight! OMG!

4. Add another grass

5. Do it over and over and over and over and over

Literally just do the same or similar blades of grass, give them all little shadows, highlight a few if you want and there you have it! So easy.

It looks really complicated like this, but its literally just a few steps, repeated over and over.

Many games use this technique and it would be perfectly serviceable for a base grass tile.

Personally, I prefer lower contrast grass. This tile will likely be used for large areas, so ideally you don't want it to be too busy or eye-burning to distract from the character.

🌿 I'll show you how to do a different type of grass now that is a little more complicated.

Midtone grass colour

2. Add some lighter and darker patches touching each other (not too high contrast!)

3. Use this shape (or your preferred, but this is how I did it) on the top edge of your patches. Colour them with the middle colour from each patch.

4. Do it again a lot (this is very tedious)

5. Add some highlights

6. Add some fun extra stuff

We're done! Have fun everyone, show me if you try it!

Pixel Art guide by me: link

[rosamundpkes]

Hello!! A couple years ago I posted this tutorial for making gifs with a moving overlay effect. In the two and a half years since I made that tutorial, I've learned some new tricks for this gif effect but most importantly I've learned how to explain things better.

For that reason, I've created this new and improved tutorial for my overlay gif effect. The basics are the same but it's simpler, I go into more detail, give better explanations, and have more comprehensive instructions.

The easiest way to do this effect with this method is to use smart objects and work in timeline. For this tutorial, I’m assuming you know the basics of giffing like cropping, resizing, colouring, etc. If you need help with this I’d suggest you look at some other tutorials and guides!!

First, we’re going to start off with three things.

1. A completed gif converted into a smart object that is going to be the base gif. I'm going to call this "gif1". You’ll want this gif to be at least 3 seconds because it needs to last as long as the overlay plus a little bit of extra time in the beginning. This is the base gif I’ll be using in the example (except I trimmed it so that I could meet the size limit).

2. A second completed gif converted into a smart object that is going to go over the base gif. We’re going to call this "gif2". This gif should be at least 2 seconds but I’ve made it work with shorter. Gif2 needs to be the same dimensions or bigger than gif1.  This is the gif I'll be using in the example (except I trimmed it so that I could meet the size limit).

3. An overlay in video form. These can be found on tumblr and youtube by search for overlay or transition packs. For this example, I'll be using an ink drop overlay I found on youtube.

Step 1: Turning the overlay video into an overlay gif Most overlays aren’t going to instantly fit the gif effect you’re trying to achieve right away. This is the overlay I got from youtube and as you can see it’s too slow and needs a crop/resize to be usable.

To fix it, I sped the frame rate up, cropped the overlay, and resized the overlay so it fits over my base gif. I also sharpened the overlay (500% amount, 0.3px radius) so that the edges were smooth. This is the new overlay gif and the one I’ll be using for the gif effect. 

A tip: I also like to add a brightness/contrast layer to get rid of the grey on the overlay gif. Because we’re working with blending modes to achieve this effect, any parts of the overlay that are grey will be a blended mix of gif1 and gif2. If you think this will look good for your gif effect then don't worry about it!

Another tip: try to get the entire overlay movement to fit into a 2-3 second window. Anything longer than that will likely be cut off when you have to trim your gif to meet the upload size limit and it would suck to only have half of the overlay.

Step 2: Creating the gif effect Drag a copy of gif2 and a copy of the overlay gif onto the gif1 canvas. I like to use Ctrl+Shift+V so that the layers are pasted in the same position as they were on the previous canvas. MAKE SURE that both overlay layers are in the same position on the canvas. If one of the overlay layers is higher/lower/etc. than the other then the effect won't work properly.

Then, make a second copy of the overlay and invert it (Ctrl+i). These are the layers you should have:

Before you go any further, trim gif2 and both overlay layers so they are all the same length.

Now, we need to rearrange the layers and set blending modes. The top layer should be whichever overlay goes from black to white. This is because when we change the blending modes, the white part of this layer will disappear and look like its being replaced by gif2. In this case, that is the overlay (inverted) layer. Then we want gif2, the other overlay layer, and then gif1.

A tip: this process can be done the other way where the top layer is the overlay that goes from white > black however, you are much more likely to have an error where there is a grey/black line around the overlay effect in your final gif. In order to avoid that, I always use the black > white layer on top.

Next, set the top overlay layer to darken. You should only see the black part from the overlay and gif2 should fill in the white part. Here’s how that looks in my example. 

Next, select the top overlay layer and gif2 and convert both layers into one smart object. Your layers tab should look like this now. 

Now, set the new layer’s blending mode to lighten and the overlay layer’s blending mode to darken. Once you do this, you should be able to see gif1 as well as the overlay gif. 

Step 3: Timeline and exporting At the moment, gif1 is still significantly longer than the overlay gifs. Since this gif is just over 10 mb (which is pretty small for this effect) I’m going to trim about 1/4 of a second off the end of gif1 and then drag the overlay layers so they all end at the same time. 

Now you’re free to export the gif! This is the finished effect for the example gif! 

A tip: sometimes, when I convert to from timeline to frames, the gif becomes a little longer and slower. It has to do with different frame rates across the videos and photoshop but I'm not smart enough to understand it. If that happens, just set all the frames with the overlay layers to 0.04 speed instead of 0.05.

And we're finished! I hope that was helpful and made sense. If you have any questions feel free to drop them in my inbox or send me a message!! <3

[homunculus-argument]

Random sketching thing I digitally do: Whenver I've got a rough sketch, and I'm not sure how to do something right, I put the rough sketch to 50% and then draw over it on another layer twice, making two just-about-as-rough and usually completely different guesswork sketches:

And then take those two rough guesswork sketches, put them to 50%, merge down, and repeat the same, by drawing their rough average twice

And then just keep repeating that - drawing according to the line that looks right/better wherever I see one, and going by the rough average where I can't tell where the good line is.

Just averaging out the combination of guesswork and working over the guesswork that I got right the last time, until I've got something I'm satisfied with, and then clean up the lineart and add details.

Then I do the same with shading. Make two layers with a rough but unrelated guesswork of where the shadows should be, and then average them out.

And after some clean-up, it's time to add some colour and final highlights. I'm not good with palettes so forgive the eye strain.

I wasn't planning on making a whole-ass tutorial out of this, I only meant to do a quick post about my lineart sketching method, but I got distracted and didn't have anything more important that I should have been doing so there you are, I guess.

[emilyscully]

gif tutorial

@bakedbakermom requested a tutorial on how i made the gifs in this set, so i've put together a little walkthrough of the process for this gif under the cut!

(disclaimer: this tutorial assumes that you already have basic photoshop/giffing knowledge - i.e. how to make and colour gifs using correction layers, how to use things like layer masks, etc. if you don't, i recommend these tutorials, they're very comprehensive)

alright! so as stated before, i'm not going to go in-depth here on the basics of gifmaking. for this one in particular, i blended three gifs, but we'll get into the third one later.

(i should also mention that blending gifs as i did here is usually easier if you have scenes with shadowed/dark areas like the ones above, so to keep that in mind when picking your scenes! i also find it easier to use scenes where there isn't a whole ton of movement going on- again, not a requirement but it's easier to plan and position gifs if the characters aren't moving across the whole canvas)

first, i started by making the base gifs of mulder and scully in "paper hearts". both are cropped to 540x540 px, and the same length (around 50 frames). i did some standard sharpening, brightening, and adding contrast (my usual process is curves, a b/w gradient map set to "soft light" at around 20% opacity, and messing with the levels a bit) before using selective colour and hue/saturation layers to highlight the teal and peach colours in the gif. sometimes this is enough colouring on its own, depending on the gif and the look you're going for, but in my case i wanted to add more.

so, on top of my colouring, i used a combination of layers set to "colour" and "hard light" to paint over the background of my gifs in teal and peach. on mulder's gif i also used a gradient fill layer in the two colours set to "colour" and used a layer mask to erase anywhere i didn't want the colour to be. the opacity levels for all of these layers again just depends on how vibrant you want your colours, i just mess with that on a gif-to-gif basis.

so we have our two gifs, cropped and coloured to fit the palette we want. next, i converted each coloured gif into a smart object, by selecting all my layers, right clicking, and hitting "convert to smart object."

once that's done, you should be able to click and drag one of the gifs onto the other gif's canvas, so that it's sitting on top. then change the blending mode of the top gif- most people use lighten or screen, this again depends on the look you want and the gifs you're using. for this one, i used screen. it'll probably look something like this:

at this point you can move your gifs around and position them as you like. for mine, i just moved scully a little off to the right, as you can see. in order to get rid of the part that's covering mulder's face, i added a layer mask to the scully gif and used a large, soft brush set to black to erase it.

(another note: i didn't need to do it here, but if you want to move/erase parts of your bottom gif, add a layer of solid black underneath both gifs.)

usually i would stop blending here, but for this set i decided to add a third gif, so i made and coloured the gif of mulder and scully holding hands, using the same methods as the first two. this one was cropped to 540x405 px to make it fit better on the canvas, since i knew i only wanted it to cover the bottom part.

i converted it to a smart object and dragged it onto the same canvas as the other two gifs. this time i used "lighten" as my blending mode, positioned it in the bottom right corner, and again used a layer mask to brush away the parts i didn't want.

on top of all three gifs, i then used layers set to "normal" and "hard light" to brush some extra colour onto the gif. this part i also just play around with on a gif-to-gif basis, but for this set i mostly used a combo of colour, hard light, and normal layers at varying opacities until i got the look i was going for. i generally just like to use big soft brushes to add colour around the edges, as i did here.

now, i have a bunch of texture/grain pngs saved on my laptop that i like to add to gifs for some extra flair, so i opened one of those and cropped it down to 540x540px. i then added a gradient map to give it that peach colour. (any textured png/jpg should work fine for this, as long as you have your gradient map set to black and white/your accent colour)

like i did with my gifs, i converted the texture + gradient map to a smart object and dragged it onto the shared canvas. i set the blending mode to "screen", with the opacity at 70%. i like to put these textures underneath the extra colouring i've done on the gif, as seen here. i don't always do this, but i feel like it sometimes helps the texture blend into the finished gif. you can also use a layer mask if needed to erase any unwanted parts of the texture.

now for the text!

for these gifs i used the font "IM FELL DW Pica" in both regular and italic, in black, at 16px. i didn't do anything fancy with the text itself besides adding a drop shadow in the blending options (right click on the text layer and hit "blending options).

then, underneath the text layer (i was working one word at a time) i used the rectangle tool to draw a small rectangle around the text- i wasn't too picky about the size or evenness since i was going for a collaged look. i set the colour of the rectangle to a light cream colour, and added a drop shadow in the blending options.

then i just selected both the text and rectangle and duplicated them using ctrl+j, changing the text for each word and adjusting the size of the rectangles as needed. once i had all of the words on my canvas, i just moved them around until i found a positioning i liked. again, since i was going for a purposefully scrapbooked look, i didn't overthink this part.

i exported my gif the way i usually do, with these settings:

and that's it! i used pretty much the same process for all the gifs in this set, give or take. hopefully this little walkthrough made sense, but i know i'm not always the best at explaining my process, so if anything needs clarifying feel free to shoot me an ask or dm!

[greatcheshire]

hey, how'd you learn how to do your makeup? i'm kind of a novice over here

Hey!! So I learned via a lot of methods - tips from friends, videos, googling. It's hard for me to remember a lot of my sources over the years. That being said, I'm going to try to link the ones I know help the most.

The Pretty Fix - this channel hasn't updated in a while but has a lot of tutorials designed to be trans-inclusive and beginner friendly. It's a great resource for just starting out and for understanding a lot of basic techniques and things to keep in mind without it being overwhelming or throwing too many product types at you.

How to Apply Eyeshadow PERFECTLY (beginner friendly hacks) by AlexandrasGirlyTalk - This video is short and simple and yet probably the most effective one I've seen when it comes to breaking down eyeshadow. I still haven't fully 100% mastered doing eyeshadow, but I feel a lot more confident with it after watching this a few times.

Dude, eyeliner changes your whole face by Alexandra Anele - Another good technique and theory video that helps a lot when trying to figure out eyeliner, which IMO is the hardest part of trying to do eye make up and something I'm only starting to feel good with as of this year

NEW Updated 2021 E-Girl Makeup Tutorial! by hannah owo - This one might seem silly at first glance because, y'know, E-girl, but honestly this is one of the most helpful makeup tutorials I've found and has drastically affected how I've done my makeup. What makes this one so good and helpful IMO is that unlike a lot of other makeup tutorials you can find, this one uses a lot of drugstore and bargain brands (at one point it recommends using a Crayola marker to create freckles) and shows the ways one can make a super elaborate look using a surprisingly small amount of products.

FACE BASICS: Hide Facial Hair (using Makeup!) Part 2: Makeup by David K Davey - I don't really do a lot of this anymore (I used to go way overboard on covering that area early in transition lol) but for those worried about beard shadow or discoloration in that area, this helps teach how to be cover that up and the colour theory behind it. Mastering this can be a godsend.

Those are the main links I can think of right now! For someone still getting in, my best advice is to get the basic tools you'll need - primer, concealer, foundation, eyeliner, mascara, blush - as well as a sponge or brush kit and play around with them, using tutorials and googling every time you think you come into an issue. Then you can start looking at more advanced things like contours and eye shadows, and the good thing about eye shadows is that most palettes have a bunch of videos online of people doing various looks and tutorials with them, meaning if you find yourself stuck, you're almost always guaranteed to find something you can use as a reference.

Makeup is hard and I still don't feel like I have a perfect understanding of it, but it can be quite fun once you find a set up you like and start getting comfortable enough to experiment with new looks and products! I hope this could help at all and I wish you the best of luck going forward!

[spacecolonie]

i adore your paintings so muchhh would you happen to have any other tips or tutorials for your process? anything from thumbnailing all the way to final render

Thank you 😭♥ I appreciate that a lot!! To start with I've got my advice tag (both new and veeery old stuff lol), & my youtube has a couple of speedpaints on it, one with commentary including process, brushes etc

In terms of general stuff about how I approach painting, I tend to tailor the method to the desired outcome. I talk about it more in depth on this post here, I also link to some references & tutorials that I really enjoy/recommend!

Besides that though, I guess I can do a little walkthrough of the Whisper & Tangle painting I uploaded a few months ago, since I tried something new with it that I pseudo integrated into my workflow & could be fun to talk about? 🤔

SO yes, I do always thumbnail when I'm doing a bigger painting, and they're definitely not pretty LOL. I usually use the colour fill lasso just to block in basic shapes and values with a gradient map slapped on the top -- I ended up swapping the values around in the end because it let me use the fireflies as the sole light source, making it more character focused! Then it's the usual process of resketching it all & flatting in the base colours (I also added Whisper's wisps hehe), then adding shading:

This is how I usually approach it, w/ all the shading layers clipped to the original flats to preserve editing. Multiply, screen & overlay are the most common layer modes I use while doing this, and if I'm ever struggling I'll sometimes add a gradient map too in order to unify awkward colours etc. The new thing I tried for this painting was doing what's often nicknamed as a 'clown pass' -- which is using hard edged shapes to create an easily-accessible selection mask for each part:

It looks Super funny but I actually found it very helpful, and I ended up using it to select & cut out all of their body parts onto seperate layers, which were then alpha locked. It meant I could go ham w/ large or textured brushes, smudges etc without worrying about losing those edges, or accidentally over-rendering and screwing up the anatomy in the process!!

I've kept doing something similar since, though it's a bit more dialed back; mainly using the lasso select to chop it up directly and preserve specific/necessary edges, grouping up similar body parts on a single layer etc.

After doing all that, I sat down and started rendering. The background was all blocked in & detailed with a hard round brush and these amazing brushes from Devin Elle Kurtz. There isn't anything super insightful that I think I could type on how I render, but I do have that speedpaint I mentioned earlier that'll probably shed more light. It's just a lot of eyedropping & painting, rinse and repeat

When rendering is done I usually add a concoction of adjustment layers, as well as an overlay w/ a noise texture on it. I also sharpen it all after doing so! These are the ones that I ended up adding for this painting:

The dupe & blur is a fun thing that doesn't always work, but it looks super neat when the painting itself calls for it, especially when paired w/ that noise texture. It can make stuff look like an old/low quality photograph or recording -- here's another example w/ a shadow and amy doodle I posted a few months ago:

That's about it for this painting, the majority of the time spent on it was honestly me rendering those damn leaves 🥲 Very tedious but worth it & it was a really good learning experience. I'm not sure if any of this will prove useful but thank you so much for sending in the ask, & if you (or anyone else reading this) wants a similar breakdown for a different painting of mine, please do let me know and I'll try my best to do one!! 🥺💞

[lacerotalong]

Time for another lace style...

We will eventually get around to learning all of these, which one do you want to learn first?

Also we have many more styles planned, these are just the styles we have good tutorial resources for so far.

These styles all require some specialty tools/supplies, which I've listed below the cut in case that's a deciding factor for people. Pretty much everything can be DIY'd or repurposed from some other common objects, and this information will be shared as part of the lace-along :)

Bobbin lace:

Thread (e.g. sewing thread, embroidery floss) (edit by mod Rex: crochet cotton or perle cotton preferable for beginners)

Bobbins (24 for the sampler we will do)

Bobbin lace pillow

Pattern printed or drawn out

Pins with small heads (a whole lot of em)

(edit by Mod comfy: I dipped my toes in this already, you can use clothespins as bobbins (basically everything that holds some thread and can be moved around comfortably), and some sturdy cardboard as a pillow. Your "pillow" just needs to be sturdy enough to keep the pins in place for the time you work on the lace, so if you have a couch pillow that could work, go for it)

Drawn thread lace:

Plain-woven linen or cotton fabric, with large enough threads you can comfortably see individual threads at a comfortable working distance

Sewing thread in the same colour as your fabric

Fine blunt-tipped needle

Fine tipped scissors or seam ripper and a steady hand

Lacis/ filet lace

Sturdy thread/ twine/ crochet cotton

Netting shuttle/ netting needle

Netting gauge/ mesh stick (e.g. dowel, knitting needle, smooth popsicle stick or similar)

Blunt tapestry needle

Some method of tensioning the net for embroidery: mesh frame/ embroidery hoop/ stiff paper to tack net down to

Needle lace:

Paper pattern printed or drawn out

Backing fabric (e.g. sturdy medium weight calico) (will not be part of finished piece)

Sticky backed plastic/ clear packing tape

Lace thread (e.g. crochet cotton, perlee, stranded cotton, silk thread)

Regular sewing thread in a contrasting colour for tacking down pattern (will not be part of the finished piece)

Sharp needle to tack down pattern

Blunt needle to make lace

Tweezers

Fine tipped scissors

Thimble (optional)

Sprang:

Sprang frame (e.g. empty backless picture frame, DIY frame made of sticks, two dowels tied to sturdy objects an appropriate distance apart)

Sturdy cord or crochet cotton

Smooth dowels/rods, 4-6 of them?

[lixenn]

Crochet corner

It's time, my dear internet people! It's time for me to babble about one of my numerous hobbies. And as the title arleady suggests, it's creative in nature, involves copious amount of yarn and often robs my bank account at gunpoint.

Yes, it's crochet! My beloved! That one activity that I have neglected for the past... who knows how many months.

But! I'm back! And I'm here to share my projects and progress and just generally ramble about fiber arts.

I won't do this in any particular order. I will talk about current, past and future projects. I will most likely complain about my inability to count and read crochet patterns. If it's in my ability to do so I will also share the patterns and tutorials I used to make my stuff, in case any of you people want to join me in doing fiber arts. (Please keep in mind that some of my patterns are in German, so I will probably only share the english ones unless requested otherwise.)

Now, let's jump right in the yarn pool with my current project (@upsilambic I'm tagging you since you seemed interested in my crochet adventures)

Triangle scarf for my mum

So, here I was chilling in the yarn store, two skeins for my planned project (mesh gloves) already in hand after consulting with the store clerk, fully intending on just buying those and instantly leaving before all the fiber goodies seduce me into making another purchase.

My mum had other plans though since she was already inspecting some of the bags that where spread out on a table. Each bag contained a set amount of skeins in prepicked colours and a pattern on how to make certain items. My Mum was intrigued... the colours spoke to her... and yes, you might have already guessed, dear reader, we walked out of that store not only with my yarn but also with one of those bags. The pattern was for a crochet scarf and my mum asked me if I could make it for her. I took a look at manual and was confronted with the absolute gibberish in the form of an unfamiliar crochet pattern. My brain offered me the nostaligic tones of the old windows shut down noise in response, so naturally the answer to my mum's questions was yes. (The motto of any fiber artist: Fuck it we ball.)

Once again I talked to the delightful sales lady, asking questions about the pattern and she was a great help. Let it be known that yarn stores are fucking awesome! I have never been in a yarn store where people weren't kind and welcoming and sweet. It's like entering a different world, one full of peace, fluff and most importantly: yarn! A yarn store is one of my favourite places to be right next to a bookshop and my bed.

Anyways, we got my stuff and we got the additional stuff (that I thankfully didn't need to pay for 🫡👍🏼)

It did take me a lil bit to fully puzzle out the scarf pattern but with some trial and error (I needed to frog once because I forgot in which row I was and tired evening!Lix didn't write it down) I'm now in the game.

Here my current progress:

The colours are more intense irl but no matter.

I will need to weave in so many ends after finishing it, I'm already regretting all my life choices *traumatised stare into the distance*

Weaving in ends is one of my many evil foes and unfortunately I still haven't defeated that one yet (I doubt I ever will). Everytime I reach that step in my work I want to set myself on fire because after couple dozen times it really does get quite tedious. It also doesn't help that I still haven't found a method where you really can't see that you have weaved in the ends (and is also secure).

But this will be a concern for future Lix 👍🏼

I will continue to crochet and watch my Let's Player (Magemasher22 on Youtube and Twitch, yes I will namedrop him, I love this guy so fucking much. He's a gem) play Honkai Star Rail.

If anyone has any questions you know where to find me 🫡

[awingedllama]

Hello, sorry to bother you! I know you're answering a lot of asks on this topic but as someone whose been curious for a long time I figure I'd come to you. I've always dreamed of a purely blank world, no ugly EA decorative buildings, at the most I'd love to delete everything from the worlds we have except maybe some trees and water. How would I go about this? I'm willing to use Studio, TOOL, or any other mods if possible.

hi! you're not bothering me, and i just realised for all the yammering i've done about my save file i haven't actually made a proper tutorial yet. woops

so removing world objects is achievable two different ways

1 (The Surprisingly Easy Way):

You can go into the .world files with Sims 4 Studio, navigate to World Object Data, click on the 'Edit' button next to Lots, and click the Remove button on any objects you don't want. There are more objects to remove in World Data as well. A quick visual guide:

Then you just replace the .world file you edited, similar to the way you'd install a lighting mod. The upside to this way is that you can stop certain objects from spawning, like the Seasons roller rink and seasonal food stands. The downside to this approach is that if you want to use a custom lighting mod, you'd need to import the creator's files (with their permission ofc, if you plan to share your edited .world file). Also, you have to re-replace the files whenever the game patches.

2 (The Also Easy, but Incredibly Tedious Way):

You can make each debug world object invisible/un-interactable by changing the Model and Footprint resources in Object Definition to zero (S4S will auto-fill the correct number of zeroes). Here is a tutorial on this method

This is the way I've done it for my save, so people can place the files in their game once and be done with it, no updates necessary, if they don't want the optional lighting (softerhaze has very kindly allowed me to use theirs!) or terrain colour edits.

I like this way because it's persistent, but I wouldn't recommend it if you'd be bothered by the objects disappearing in other worlds. If you hide an object this way, all instances of it are hidden, not just the ones in a certain world.

if you have any questions you can send me another ask or private message!

[captain-hen]

Hi! Do you have a tutorial about how to make gifs like this? https://www.tumblr.com/captain-hen/718203110790660096/911-under-pressure-lgbtqcreators-creator?source=share

Like making them with only one certain prominent colour if that makes sense? I'm not good at explaining tbh, i'm sorry! Your sets always look so amazing! Thanx for making them!

hi! thank you for your kind words! so, in this set, i used three different methods to get those results. the method i used for hen and maddie's gifs is already explained here. the method i used for the rest of yellow gifs, and the gif with Buck coming out of the swimming pool, was just highlighting and isolating colors that are already prominent in the image. i'll touch on that briefly, later, but i'll expand more on how i did the buddie and buckley siblings gifs, which is color manipulation. i'll be showing you how to get a gif that looks a bit like this:

so, before we begin, there are a couple things to be kept in mind

i'm going into this tutorial assuming you know the basics of gifmaking, coloring—particularly the selective color layers. i won't be explaining any of that.

scene selection is probably more important than the actual coloring process. if you don't have a scene that works, the methods i explain here will be completely useless.

with the above point in mind, i'll tell you which type of scenes work for the color manipulation method. you'll need a scene with a grayish, neutral kind of background. here are some scenes which more or less fit what i mean:

your scenes shouldn't have too much white in the background. a little white can be fixed, but too much will result in your coloring being pixelated. keeping all this in mind, choose a scene that has a background that looks like this, in terms of color palette. or just go with my example of the buddie one, and we can get started!

make your gif, sharpen it, and color it as you normally would. this is how my gif looked after the basic process:

for the purpose of this tutorial, we will be working entirely with selective color. i'm aware that other gifmakers use color balance, instead, for color manipulation, but that's not what we're doing here.

please keep in mind—whatever color you ultimately want your gif to be, we are gonna start by making it a bright blue. we can manipulate it from there to look like anything you want.

first, i want you to add a selective color layer and then go to the neutrals tab. in case you're not familiar, neutrals works a bit like color balance—it adds a tint that affects the entire image when you mess around with it. this feature is perfect for working with scenes like this one. right now, we'll only be touching the cyan slider. go ahead and slide it up a bit, but not too much, because then you'll affect the skin-tones of your characters in a way that won't be easy to fix.

i forgot to add it in the gif, but please keep in mind—when you mess around with neutrals, the skin color of your character gets invariably affected. you'll need to go back to reds in selective color and make the color look normal again, in this case, i decreased the cyans in the reds and upped the yellows.

now, our gif has a good amount of cyan in the background. this is enough for us to work with, you won't need to touch the neutrals tab again. add another selective color layer, this time, go to the cyans tab. while trying to turn cyan into true blue, you:

up the cyan slider to it's fullest

up the magenta slider—magenta cancels out green, so any greens that maybe present in your cyan will get killed

decrease the yellows, because yellow cancels out blue. this not only makes your cyan into true blue, it also makes the color bolder and brighter.

as you can see, i added two such cyan layers, with similar settings. the gif looks fairly blue, now, but it's still not enough. after adding a third cyan layer, i focused my attention on the blues in selective color. you'll probably need only one—two at most—of this layer.

here in the blues tab, you do essentially the same thing you did in cyan. essentially, what we want is—1) the scene to be true blue, no hints of cyan or green or anything else, and, 2) the blue to be as bright as possible.

let me explain why i wanted the background to be a bright blue first. blue is a cool and neutral color—any manipulation you do of it shouldn't affect the skin tone of your characters, which is the main thing we're trying to avoid here. even if you want your background to be, say, a bright red, i recommend starting with blue and working your way up from there. hope that makes sense!

if this is the color you're happy with for your background, that's well and good. if not, let me show you how to make it into other colors.

if you wanna make the background purple, you'll want to go into the blues tab in selective color and decrease the cyans, increase the magentas and yellows. then you should go into the cyans tab and do the same, like so:

now, if you want to make it green, instead, you'll need to increase the cyans in the blues tab, decrease the magenta and increase the yellow. rinse and repeat in the cyans tab.

by now you should have a pretty good idea of the process works, of which colors cancel each other out or compliment each other. using this method, with the correct type of scene, you can manipulate your background in almost any way you want! let me demonstrate with a few other scenes:

(sorry if these gifs look jerky—adding the fade in affect always messes with the frames 😔)

now that we're done with this, i'll touch briefly upon isolating colors that are already prominent in an image. i'll use the example of one of the gifs in this set.

as you can see, the original scene with no coloring already has a lot of yellow in it. we can work with that. after doing my normal coloring, i added a selective color layer, went to the neutral tab again, and this time, i upped the yellows all the way to 100. that gave me this result:

(again, i'm sorry this gif looks weird—i have no clue what happened)

there's still a lot of green in the trees, but that can be fixed. i went to the yellows in selective color, decreased the cyan completely, increased the magenta slightly and increased the yellows completely. that gave me this:

so that's how you do it! if the prominent color is blue, like the gif of buck in the swimming pool, all you have to do is use selective color to highlight the blues as much as possible—like i've already explained. using the same principles, you can do the same thing for pretty much any color that's already prominent in a gif.

a word of warning, though: while trying to highlight colors such as yellow, red and orange, take caution to do it only for scenes where the character's faces aren't really visible, like in overhead shots. this is because messing with these particular colors will definitely screw up their skin tones, which is not a good thing, especially for characters of color, it is easiest to go wrong with them. colors like blue, green, pink, purple are all fair game, but take the greatest caution with warmer colors.

i hope this helped you, and made sense! i know i rambled a lot, so i'm sorry about that. feel free to reach out if you have anymore questions!

[james-beaufort]

hi! do u mind explaining how u did the square overlay in this set? thank u sm 🫶🏽

hi sorry for taking so long to answer. i hope this helps and makes sense (if you have any other questions feel free to ask or I could even send you the psd if you want). tutorial below the cut as it's image heavy :)

So basically I started with my 2 gifs at 540x540 pixels. This isn't essential, but I'll also note that when I crop the gifs I like to uncheck the "Delete Cropped Pixels" box so that I can move them around after cropping in case I don't like how it was cropped initially.

For this gifset I ended up putting the two gifs and their colourings in a group with clipping masks for the colouring layers (curves, vibrance, etc). Making the two gifs into smart objects would also work and would be my usual preferred method, but for this particular set it was easier to use the groups so I could keep the colouring of the you weren't a maybe speech.

Once the gifs are overlayed on top of each other only the top gif should be visible (as below)

To create the grid effect there are some tutorials for versions of photoshop which have a setting where you can just input the configuration you want (e.g 4x4) and it will draw up the guides for you. Here is the initial tutorial I saw showing how to do that and another one I found just now which outlines the exact same grid effect as in my set. This way is easier than the way I did it, but my photoshop doesn't have the option 😭

For mine I created a New Guide by following the menu path "View > New Guide"

This opens up a dialog box that looks like this

As the guide menu is in cm I doubled checked what the size of the canvas is in cm. A 540 x 540 px canvas comes to 19.05 cm. I wanted to draw a 4x4 guide, so to start I divided 19.05 by 4. This comes to 4.76, so I input this value into the box and clicked ok.

To draw the other lines I just added 4.76 to each previous line drawn so that the lines were even. The guides ended up being (4.76, 9.52 and 14.28). I then repeated the same numbers but with the Vertical orientation button selected.

This gives you a guide which looks like this:

To start exposing the other gif I grabbed the rectangle select tool and started selecting the areas I wanted to mask. The tool should snap to the guides so it is fairly easy to stay within the squares.

Then I just masked over it with a black paintbrush

I continued on with this until I was happy with how it looked - this was my final result

And this is how my layer mask looked

To draw the lines I then selected the line tool and set it to white and 2px. To draw them I held down the shift button, which allowed me to snap the line I'm drawing directly on top of the guides and continue with it as all one shape.

When you draw on top of the guides they go orange

I then toggled the guide off by pushing ctrl + ;

I checked to make sure all the boxes and lines were aligned properly and just cleaned up the gifs by using the selection box and masking until it was perfect (as I'm very type A)

I set the line layer to "Lighten" blending mode and an opacity of 70% as I thought it looked better.

Then I just added the text and moved it around how I pleased.

[sonadowkismesis]

hi, i really love your art! the way u use shapes is really good. do you have a process for picking exaggerated shapes and colour palettes?

finally got around to answer this ask, sorry it took so long! i'm not a professional and mostly learned on instinct so i don't have the technical vocabulary to explain my process, but i'll try

usually what i do when trying to translate a pre-existing character into my style is understanding how their design works. often ill get familliar with the character first by drawing them as they are in their original style.

picking knuckles as my test subject for today (apologies in advance, for all my examples are sonic characters)

so as you can see, i marked the main points of interest. which parts are most emphasized and have the most weight, that sorta thing. that way i can push the stylization even further by breaking it down to its bare essentials.

and there! compact knuckles. the main parts i highlighted are now reduced to very basic shapes, rid of all distractions and superfluous detail. no more folds of the cloth, its just a big round fist now.

another big part of this process is foregoing perspective altogether as to make the drawing look flatter.

as for the shapes i used, i mostly refer to how knuckles is as a character, and work up from there. hes the brawn, but also stern and immovable (like the mountain, as he is often associated with). so i mostly stuck with boxes to make him look imposing and steady, and using circles and triangles sparingly to balance everything out. for example, the most noticeable use of circles was at knuckles' hands and feet, as to make the design look more cohesive.

another thing i wanna touch on quickly is tangeants! theyre very good to make a drawing look flatter, and theyre my absolute favorite part of stylization! however they can be tricky, as using them the wrong way can make your whole drawing harder to read.

here's a good video on tangeants in art that explains the subject more comprehensively!

but anyways, heres an example of what im talking about. in red, i have marked the places where i used a tangent to simplify the design. for example, at 2, instead of using two separate lines for the frown, i made it one tangential, continuous line instead.

same as with knuckles, the shapes i prioritize are informed by what i want to communicate. shadow (as pictured above) has a violent, proud but also dainty character, so i gave him sharp edges where it was convenient (quills, chest fur, fingers etc) to communicate that sort of dangereous elegance (think of it like thorns of a rose). the bulkier parts of his design are mostly relegated to his bracelets and footwear.

i gave him a more accentuated inverted triangle bodyshape and squared his shoulders, like he's holding a well-practiced posture, while also showing his prideful side.

★

thats it for the stylization tutorial! keep in mind im an amateur and this is just ive gathered over the years, my method isnt universal. my lingo might also be pretty off but i hope this helped you regardless.

as for colors uhhhh. honestly i just pick the ones on wtv official art im looking at then fuck around with the filters til it looks right lol. jk i guess i do have some kind of intuitive understanding of color theory by now but i wouldn't know how to explain it. sorry!

[freddie-foxs]

Hi there! I saw the screen recording you did for the Aemond gifset (superb work, by the way) and I was wondering if you would be open into doing a step-by-step tutorial on how you played with the colors (what was the graph on the right side of the window?) and how you manipulated the color palette when saving the gifs? No pressure! Was just curious :) Thank you!

Hi there, nonny! Step by step below the cut here.

I don't keep the psd files of my gifs, mostly because I don't have the storage space to do that, so I've made a different gifset of the same scene, so it should be much the same, if not better.

I believe this:

is the graph you were asking about? This is the histogram. I don't believe it has any practical usage in gifmaking. If any other gifmaker here has a different opinion, please share it. (I'm doing a photography degree, photoshop is my next unit so I'll know more about it soon)

Right, step by step. Hold your horses, this is long:

Step 1: get the clip. Some gifmakers use screen caps to make gifs. I do not know how to make them or how to use them and I find my own method works. If another gifmaker could add on how you make your screen caps, and if it is better than my own method, please add it. 😊

Where you get the clip from is a question. YouTube, somewhere else... as long as it's saved as a MP4 file on you computer/laptop, it doesn't matter. What does matter is the quality of your clips. A lot of people use 4K (super high quality) clips. I find those to be slow and arduous and may have been responsible for the fall of my old, decrepit laptop. HD or UHD are likely enough for some decent quality.

Step 2: Get the clip in the software (I use Adobe Photoshop. For some softwares, you might have to clip the clip i.e. make it shorter before just dumping it in) In Photoshop go to File > Import > Video Frames to Layers and a window will come up. Move the sliders until you have approximately what you want (don't worry about being exact. Just as long as you have what you need.) (Don't forget to click Limit to every 2 frames)

Step 3: Once the clip has opened and your ready to start, crop out any black/white edges. Then cut out the frames you don't want

Step 4: We are now ready to begin editing!! 🥳🥳🥳 Editing tends to just be a huge pile of trial and error. I have an order to things, but I often have to go back and adjust my first layers later.

I like to start with the Brightness/Contrast, for obvious reasons (I like to SEE what I'm doing *cough cough* HBO *cough cough*

The I adjust the Hue/Saturation, where I reduce the saturation of each individual colour. That reduction tends to be useful when I make further adjustments in effort to 'fix' as much of the shit colour grading as I can.

The next step is a combination of a Photo Filter (set to the default warming filter) and a Vibrance adjustment layer.

Next the where most of the magic happens. The Colour Balance allows me to adjust the colours in the shadows, midtones and highlights. The aim of this is to attempt to restore some colour. It can look a little weird when editing.

Finally is the Levels. This is a final brightness edit where I add most of my contrast.

Video featuring both sets here. Pause as needed to see the adjustments

Then, change the frame delay to 0.1, or whatever suits your fancy, but 0.1 is the most natural. Then, Click the button in the bottom left corner of the timeline which Converts to Video Timeline, then select all the layers, right click and Convert for Smart Filters.

After this is sharpening, cropping and then exporting. Either File > Export > Save for Web (Legacy) or Alt + Shift + Ctrl + S

Here I change the size. (Usually adjust the height to 540px. Width depends on how I've cropped it. I my source clip excluding black edges was in the ratio 16:9, 540px is usually half that)

If you are uploading gifs to Tumblr, keep an eye of the file size. Tumblr doesn't allow for file sizes about 10MB, although for me it's always been more like 9.5MB. If that number is too high and you have made the gif as short as possible (no more the 50 frames if possible) and you have reduced the size (my limit tends to be about 480px height dependant on my crop ratio), then you change the number of the colours from 256 to NO LESS THAN 200. (lower than this may considerably reduce your quality)

Then you press Undo or Ctrl + Z a few times until you have all of your frames again and then repeat.

And all that can take half an hour or more. Hope this answers the question as well.

[underpaid-paragon]

Your VTM comic book covers are simply GORGEOUS, I'm totally in awe! How did you get the super cool halftone/coloured dots effect? It looks super cool and realistic, I love it! Have a lovely day! :)

Thank you so much!

So to get the halftones, I use an old-ass tutorial I got off deviantArt literally....more than a decade ago? (Rosalarian's Golden Age Tutorial). The account appears to be deactivated, but I'll go through the steps here:

For reference, I bounce between Clip Studio Paint and a very old-ass copy of Photoshop, but if you're using other programs that have fun pixelate filters and you can change the color mode, you should be ok.

NOW...

Ink your drawing in straight black on its own layer

Block your colors on another layer (I hunted up some old comic color palettes thanks to madformidcentury dot com/2013/10/mid-century-color-palette-in-comics dot html)

Turn off any and all blackwork (this is INCREDIBLY important), and take your colorwork into Photoshop. (if there are any gaps in your color work, fill a separate layer with white and then merge the layers so it's all solid)

Set the mode to CMYK

Go to Artistic Filters >> Pixelate >> Color Halftone (the only thing I mess around with is the size of the dots; the default for my era of Photoshop is 8 and that's a lil big for my taste--all the VTM covers are between 4-6. It's up to your own best judgement, but I go by how "readable" things look--does the face still look like a face at a reasonable distance or is it just a smudge? If it's not readable, undo and change your dot size)

Add 3 new layers to your document and LABEL THEM: Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow

Then go to your channels panel and click on the Cyan layer to make a selection of it

Back to your Layers panel, make sure you're on your Cyan layer, and SELECT INVERSE

Then FILL the selection with the CMYK cyan that you've picked out

Deselect your selection, move to the next layer (and make sure you've got CMYK magenta in your bucket) and repeat steps 6-8 selecting Magenta and Yellow respectively

NOW you've got the beginnings of retro-feeling halftone. At this point, I import the halftone manipulation back into CSP and turn my blackwork back on.

For the ✨ grunge ✨ effect, I grab an old paper texture (after reducing its saturation and upping the contrast until it's mostly black and white splotchy) and set it to OVERLAY at anywhere from 50-20% (this is a 'let your soul decide' moment) over the whole thing

Then I grab another old paper texture and put underneath the Overlay Texture Layer, on MULTIPLY, at anywhere from 65-25% (again, let your soul decide). Both layers will give you a nice level of funk to go with your halftone shenanigans

A lot of the colorwork is going back and forth and back and forth because what looked ok in flats didn't translate after toning, but it works out eventually!

Some important things to remember:

Cool tones tend to fade back and warm tones tend to move forward if you're gonna use this method on any kind of scene

Keep your shapes SIMPLE; don't get bogged down in tones of gradients and fades and all of that because most of it WILL NOT come across once you start toning! Think of it this way: mass-production doesn't have time for fine detail, that's why comics are a lot of heavy black inks and flat color contrast

Experiment with the colors! You're working in a limited palette (if you're using any of the old Marvel/DC print books especially), and it doesn't have to be photorealistic/absolute. For instance, my Nos isn't actually green, but the tone suited the funky retro vibe so I went with it!

Let yourself fall down the research rabbit hole of pulp covers because they're both hilarious and informative. Same dot energy is an interesting collection website to go through, you can also go through your search engine (remember to add -pinterest -youtube to your search term to filter out that crapola)

HAVE FUN!

💖

[putschki1969]

2023/07/26 Blog post by Wakana 熱いビルボードライブを振り返ろう♪〜オレ！〜

❗This is Fan Club EXCLUSIVE content❗ ❗PERSONAL USE ONLY❗ Do ❗NOT SHARE❗ on other sites ❗Join her FAN CLUB! Check out my detailed TUTORIAL ❗

Let's Look Back on a Passionate Billboard Live♪〜Oh Le！〜

It's way too hot, I'm melting every time I step outside...Like every year, I carry around my three sacred must-have items for the summer time, a hat, a parasol and a portable fan. They are indispensable to me so this year, I am once again doing all of my activities with the help of them👒⛱. I recently realised that wearing a hat can trap a lot of heat so whenever I feel too hot, I take off my hat and put the fan on my head to cool it down! 😂This is a pretty good method! It cools down my head quickly and feels refreshing! (Of course, it is also effective to use the fan on your neck and back ♪) Your head can get surprisingly hot, so when you go out, try to cool the top of your head frequently♪＼(^o^)／

Hi, this is Wakana (0￣▽￣0)／

Today, I would like to reflect on "Wakana Billboard Live 2023 ~Sono Saki e~" and share a lot of photos from the performances\\\\٩( 'ω' )و //// Some group photos first! This first photo is right after the 1st stage of the Yokohama performance on July 6th♪ (I felt relieved that I had successfully finished KEMONO so I look pretty refreshed here). From left to right we have our music director Satoshi Takebe, myself, manipulator & keyboardist Yugo Maeda, and guitarist Tetsuro Toyama♪ The next photo was taken right after the 2nd stage ♪ (Everyone was waiting for me to come back. I'm looking really smug here for some mysterious reason)

Then we have a picture of us after the 1st stage in Osaka on July 20th♪ (Billboard Live Osaka's dressing room has been renewed and transformed into a truly wonderful space!) And another shot after the 2nd stage♪ (Our infamous Sushi Zanmai pose~)

I'll also post some stage pictures＼(^o^)／ First of all, a couple of shots of the Yokohama performances! Yokohama 1st stage and Yokohama 2nd stage. And then two shots from Osaka. The 1st stage and the 2nd stage! I already noticed it during the release event, everyone in Osaka is so freaking energetic, it's amazing! 😳 Of course everyone in Yokohama is also full of energy but the reactions I get in Osaka are on another level! 😂 A lot of people called out to me, I was so happy and surprised, for a while there I actually thought I was hallucinating 😂This really helped me recharge😭✨Thank you 😭✨ (And here is the view of the audience area from the stage @Billboard Osaka. We actually moved the tables a bit closer to the stage for the performances)

At the Osaka performance, the creator duo "two two two" who made the music video for "KEMONO feat.Shinya Kiyozuka" came to support me! I received a special souvenir from them, look at Kemono-chan hiding on the packaging! Cute~♡ I didn't even notice the two of them in the audience. Maybe there were two gentlemen with a hat standing on the side... 😭(It was delicious and we ate it all right away, of course I shared it with my musicians! I tried the Kodai cheese flavour of Shikajika)

Next up are my dresses! Here's the dress for the 1st stage♪ I like the botanical pattern and it has a nice breezy summer vibe♪ Then we have the dress for the 2nd stage! This time, I went for green and blue inspired by the album covers for "Sono Saki e". The blue dress makes me think of the waves of the sea and the beautiful sky, I love the delicate colour 😍 I was sweating a lot in it though *laughs* The hair style with all the braids was also amazing! I could never do this by myself so I can only have this kind of hairstyle with the help of a stylist and makeup artist!

Once again, I wanna say a big thank you to everyone who came to my Billboard Live performances😊 I put a lot of thought into "Sono Saki e" and took on various challenges. This live was special because somehow I felt it was needed in order to properly complete the album production. This way you could fully enjoy the music in a special atmosphere on a special day. I want to continue to walk “to the future” together with all of you. I hope that this feeling was conveyed to everyone. Being able to share these moments with you and being able to sing while looking into your eyes makes me happier than anything else😊And since it was also quite challenging I'll definitely never forget about it😂 I will continue to do my best \\\٩( 'ω' )و //// It has truly been a passionate summer! I'm really thankful to you for these experiences!

Last but not least, here are some pictures of me singing and dancing a Matsuken Samba all by myself before the 2nd Yokohama performance! (Oh-le-oh-le-♪ => Matsuken Samba~♪) Amazingly, no one was watching! I was completely ignored. Outrageous!

I have another story to share with you about something exciting I did the day after the Osaka performance so I will post it on the blog soon! Until next time☆(*'▽'*)/

＊＊＊Wakana＊＊＊