#kind of a tutorial i guess

[basedonconjecture]

Ok there a number of ways to do them, I have a couple of methods myself, so I certainly do not speak for everyone but here’s my quick and dirty method you can do right from your phone!

This will be based on a 3x3 grid mood board (like what you can currently see in my pinned post) but that is far from the only configuration and you can play around with that!

1. Images - I, personally, use Pinterest* as a source because I essentially dump inspo into character/story related boards there anyway. There’s a ton of free stock image websites out there as well. When it comes to quotes and lyrics, I will usually use a word doc app and fiddle with the typography until it’s something I like or screenshot off of somewhere like spotify. For a 3x3 grid, you’ll need 9 images in total.

2. Editing - Most smart phones will have a built in photo editor and this is what I use to both crop images into squares (only really important if you are doing a grid, they don’t have to be the same size but the square part is important) and edit them to look decently similar in quality with brightness/contrast/sharpening/etc. Black and white fudges a lot, haha. But so will most any colored filter (see below.)

3. Compiling - This part is the easiest (for me) because all you’ll need is an editing app that has the ability to grid multiple images at once. I use the Layout app for Instagram but with everything going on with Meta these days, completely understandable if you’d rather not. Unfortunately, I do not know of any others to offer but I’m sure they’re out there. Here you can arrange the images in which ever order you want and, once finished, export as a new image to your photos.

4. Optional - This part is up to you but I like to then use a filter over top of the new mood board image to give it a little extra cohesion (and again, can fudge a lot of discrepancy in quality). Again, should be built into your phone’s photo editing.

*Necessary Disclaimer: Pinterest may be controversial here as an image source because it is a social media at the end of the day. With the proliferation of AI images and uncredited art on that platform, as well as other places, it is best to be wary and avoid that where you can. As long as it’s for personal use and not for profit (i.e. for characters and fan works vs promoting original work or making money off said mood boards or claiming the images as your own) it falls into that gray area for me that most mutations of fandom-related work do but this is a subjective opinion on a nuanced topic. For me, usually my mood boards end up being a snapshot of my larger Pinterest boards that are already public which is why I have this opinion but other people may approach them differently, hence the disclaimer. That said, and to be very clear, I am not advocating for use of generative AI and stealing other people’s work. Credit wherever possible etc etc.

AnYwAY, there are other ways to do them. I’m on mobile so I may update this with links and things later but Canva is a good free resource to also make them (@hyperions-light posted a tutorial on how to use it for fanfic banners as well very recently) and can also be accessed via mobile. Photopea is a decent browser version of what is basically photoshop that is also free if you want even more control over image editing and layout etc etc but is not mobile friendly.

This is just how I like to do them with like the least amount of effort lol I hope it was helpful 🫠

Aight how are you all doing these mood boards for your Rook bc I WANT IN!!!

[starlitmeadows]

do you have any advice on drawing slugcats/scavs? i love how you draw both... sincerely...

i'm rising from the dead just to answer this one even though i'm not much of an adviser or a tutorial guy x) my style is not consistent and i just flow with most of things

but here's some tutorial-ish things

slugcats are just...blobs at this point in my style, i don't use many additional lines or smth for them

it's like this one "how to draw a rat" meme where there's only two steps: "draw any shape" "done"

scavengers are more complicated tho!

they have actual anatomy and as stated - i'm still figuring it out x) but at least it's fun

here's some other scavs i drew for a little example - a random one and kinda an OC of mine

i hope this helps even if just a little bit, i really have no idea how to explain my drawing process or give drawing advice :")

[devotion-disorder]

recently I've received a couple of anons asking about a tutorial on how I render stuff. While im really happy that some of you might want to learn from me, I'm hesitant to answer them because I don't think I'm qualified to be teaching anyone about rendering/coloring! I mean, hell, I post a rendered artwork, like, once a month LOL

I think the way I colour is still extremely amateurish, and I've got a lot to learn myself in terms of actual theory and stuff. And to tell the truth, my process is mostly intuitive - hence why its amateurish and sometimes straight up Not Good my dawg!!!!!!!!!

The only advice I can give is that there's a lot of great resources online for free, especially on youtube. Also you can study your favourite artists' work in detail, try to pinpoint specifically what is it that makes their work appeal to you. Eventually you'll develop a sense for this kind of stuff I think!

[fantasykiri5]

Chat which do we like more, with or without the extra little patches of colors (ignore that the bark edge on the top isn't finished- I'm gonna do it once I've figured put the rest of the bark)

[arkarti]

Genuine question, because I've been struggling HARD on how to nail Afton in my own artstyle - how do you study with yer take of him? I know the sketches n whatnot, which are honestly inspiring to me, and of course studying Matthew Lillard would help - but you have such a specific flow that is incredibly charming to me.

How did you work/study in terms of yer anatomy & facial structure fer yer art? Whether it be Afton studies or yer older pieces like Markiplier! Ya got such a nice flow between 'cartoon' & 'realistic' that is genuinely scratching every part of my brain. /vpos /gen 🙏🏼🧡🧡

that's a good question 😂 if I draw something long enough, someday I'll get an enlightenment what I like + what looks good. the struggle is finding the right amount of details/ lines and keeping it balanced

well for example with Markiplier: my first studies were more realistic and had a lot of detail, which takes more time draw 😩

Went the more simplified route: - less details!!! keeping the lines at a minimum - round nose + face/chin - minimalistic beard - stylized hair (kinda like disney 2D characters)

biggest factor to make it more cartoony/ simpler was that I wanted to do animatics with him, so I had to go the "low poly" design route and make it easy to draw. tried to study what makes the face characteristic for the person. works more or less - sometimes I cannot get it right either :'DD So I said ♪ meet me halfway ♫ and tried to aim for the middle of these styles 😂

Same goes for William - my first drawing of him (for a shitpost animatic, left side) was a bit too complex, so I had to simplify it (right)

GET SIMPLIFIED, IDIOT (affectionate) 🙏

[clownowo]

Guardian of the Eastern Gate and the One Entrusted with a Flaming Sword by God: Principality Aziraphale

[rexscanonwife]

[frogayyyy]

h(at) progress

[ombrathefurry]

how do you generally design characters/choose color pallets?

whenever I try and create a good color pallet they always end up clashing and looking absolutely awful

i've tried using websites but they always end up being very bland, so i'm turning to the expert lol

the only character i've created that I actually. like. is the one that's just a black freaking tiger with rainbow glowing stripes, but that's because monochrome with color pops just always is flawless </3

Expert what expert

I'm by no means any expert, but I'm really happy you think my designs are appealing enough for you to ask me this!!

I ALWAYS try to come up with a character concept or idea for who they are before I start designing. Because of this, you see a lot of my designs turning out to be designed very strategically, with their features actually having proper functions and reasons to be there

This is why I have such a hard time with gifted designs. I don't know how to make them work without a background or concept I can really connect to properly.

For specific character designs, I usually think of and flesh out a basic idea in my head. Depending on how lucky I end up being, I can imagine every detail right off the bat. Other times, I have to put some work into it and experiment a little.

Here's an example of me working out a character design WIP right now

Development of Mr. V

Some characters just pop into my head exactly the way they are, like how Samuel did

Cogsworth too

Some of my characters come from dreams, too, and I just immediately sketch out my interpretation of the idea I'd had

Peter came from a dream about a white rabbit with a weird face killing a nuclear family's father leaving the mother and child alone with no idea what happened (it was disturbing, (there are more disturbing details,) which is why I made peter very unsettling)

Butch came from a dream that had something to do with fake peppino from pizza tower running around the It Steals maze area throwing cleavers at whoever he ran into

Dreams are a GREAT place to come up with character concepts

They give you a very solid ground before you start designing

One of my guidelines for creating characters is that they should be instantly recognizable as their own character. What are their special features? What defines them? What features would I keep if I were to draw them at the bare minimum detail? What parts of the design would make the character unrecognizable without them?

For example, Reena without her yellow.

Queen without her shadows.

You see this rule pop up a lot online, though mostly focusing on the idea of the silhouette of a character standing out from the others.

While I think it's a good option for when it comes to developing designs, I don't like worrying about it too much. I try to create the individual features of the character rather than immediately think about the silhouette.

All things considered, you're also totally allowed to break the rules to achieve something else. For example, Saleem and Minnow have identical silhouettes because I wanted them to give an uncannily similar vibe. Some characters who were derived off of others through dreams I might have had have very similar silhouettes as a nod to their origins, though have very differentiated individual features.

I look to various other artists and designers I like for feature ideas when I'm super stuck (usually when my ideas are more abstract)

for example, scrawl came from a very abstract dream and literally didn't have a face (they were just a bunch of hands and looked a little bit like a black void worm from Rainworld)

I took inspiration from Fooffle's Space AU Warren for his face, Sir Needle's sona's ears for his hair, and gave him this sweater from a random thing I found on Pinterest that I liked

Bennet (and the rest of the caravan gang) came from a dream about various different individuals riding on a wagon - Bennet specifically in the dream was Uncle Ben who runs The Urban Rescue Ranch. I ended up giving him the name Bennet in reference to this, as well as Uncle Ben's broad shoulders, muscular build and curly hair.

Queen's entire existence is inspired off of the protagonist from Bendy and the Dark Revival. As a nod to this, I gave her a partially monochrome color scheme with some accents. Queen's shadow face was inspired off of this specific fanart of Caesar from The Mandela catalogues.

(I can't find the source for the life of me sobs)

Mr. V was inspired off of Itward from Fran Bow, as well as Pastra's sona Clyde the veldigun. I gave him Itward's large hat and formal attire, and Clyde's long limbs and striped patterns. I also gave him deep halloween colors as a nod to both inspiration's aesthetics.

My biggest thing about features is there has to be a REASON why they have these features, but that's just personal preference (and there doesn't have to be a good reason, or even a reason at all every single time)

okay now for the main part of the ask (I've been stalling)

Sorry if this is disappointing, I don't have a process for picking colors that work together

It's a lot of trial and error, and some characters I've even stalled making profile pictures for because I don't know what to color them as.

to me, you can pick any color you want. It's actually very impressive to think about how many colors you could use.

I'll try to explain what I do know about the placement of colors, though. It doesn't matter what colors you use, but in my opinion, the placement of these colors is what really matters in designs.

Depending on how many colors I'm planning on giving the design, I like to split them up into parts. Primary coloration (1,) which takes up most of the design, secondary coloration (2,) which takes up less of the design but still a good amount, (Sometimes I have more, tertiary, quaternary, whatever, that take up about an equivalent ratio of the design as secondary,) and accent colors (3.)

Similar colors can also be grouped together in these sectors. For example, all the purple in this character would be primary, the greys secondary, and the oranges the accents.

For Chakra, his purples would be primary, all the bright colors of the wounds secondary, and his outstanding eyes accents.

Each sector should be different and differentiable from one another!

Divide your character up into sectors for coloration. Decide what colors go where. Sometimes it takes a bit of shuffling to find what works for you. Adding inbetween colors to branch the gaps between your selected colors can help tie things together, too.

To me, instead of WHAT colors you use, it all comes down to how you USE those colors.

Cordis is mainly dark colored, primary, with their secondary rainbow colors and their accented white features. Even with rather bright colors in their palette, they still come off as a dark gloomy character because of the placement/ratio of those colors.

Monarch has very clashing colors, though when separated and balanced out, they appear harmonious and work together.

Anyways that turned further into a rant about character design than anything else

I hope this helped :D

[sl8bqqa8]

Wait it's almost my sister's BIRTHDAY and I still haven't bought the supplies to make her YARNABY PLUSH IM STUPID

[somanyjacks]

Decided to play Shin Megami Tensei III Nocturne for the first time this weekend and damn, they really just drop the Demi-Fiend right into it, huh

no backstory, no preamble, just blam you're a demon now, kid, oh and also Tokyo has been destroyed, figure it out for yourself

[jovialturtleface]

It is a little sad to see people either joining or returning to Tumblr but not bothering to change themes, although I guess being used to other social sites it's probably a little weirder to get into customizing a theme.. It's still so strange to me like I know we're in a different time on the internet but I am still full of memories when people would have deviantart pages decorated with gifs and pagedolls of their favorite things and OCs and beautiful journals that would be them writing something mundane that ends with XD.

Does anyone remember when youtube used to let you customize your channel background and even your username under a video? I remember I saved one of the backgrounds I found cool on an old family computer because I wanted to make my own and when they later removed that feature I would still continue to look at it... There's a lost media thing there, trying to find all the old youtube backgrounds people used.

Sorry I just kind of get sad when I think about how many sites get rid of customization features to the point where the most exciting feature is that at least you get a banner.

[antirepurp]

lowkey thinking about listing 3d models as commission options bc i've been doing these for a while now and im getting better at them too but god the pricing would be so bad. like the modeling part itself takes days to get finalized already, and the rigging will take just as long if i need to build one from scratch, not to mention if it needs to do a lot of specific things extra things like have a lot of shape keys for facial expressions and the like. i could not in good consciousness price them any lower than 100€ and that's assuming the model is simple and/or does need a brand new rig. im not even going into my excessive overthinking of the typical use cases of 3d models and how i can't at this time ensure that my models would work for all the possible purposes out of the box wough

[itzphynix]

I changed my mind. Hater behavior is undeserved, when it comes to works, & idgaf about holding creators accountable when their games are mid, anymore.

[malachitezmeyka]

I am. making An Attempt. to wrap New Years’ presents for the first time. and it is Not Going Well

[scootatwoni]

Thinking abt the decently popular artist that commented, followed and liked my art back during my middle school DA days vs the decently popular artist/game dev on here that vague posted abt me on main a few years ago when i followed one of their socials without realizing it was inactive 👍