Dagens Djur @djur - Tumblr Blog

If you want to open your mind on how you think about art analysis and you’ve never taken any college courses on art history or analysis please read Ways of Seeing by John Berger (1972)

trans-seraphim

prettier web version here

quarter0master

even better: the tv show it was originally conceptualized as

i-like-eyes

Weirdly Specific Artist Ask Game

Didn't see a lot of artist ask games, wanted to make a silly one.

(I wrote this while sick out of my mind last year and it's been collecting dust in my drafts, I might as well let it run free) 1. Art programs you have but don't use

2. Is it easier to draw someone facing left or right (or forward even)

3. What ideas come from when you were little

4. Fav character/subject that's a bitch to draw

5. Estimate of how much of your art you post online vs. the art you keep for yourself

6. Anything that might inspire you subconsciously (i.e. this horse wasn't supposed to look like the Last Unicorn but I see it)

7. A medium of art you don't work in but appreciate

8. What's an old project idea that you've lost interest in

9. What are your file name conventions

10. Favorite piece of clothing to draw

11. Do you listen to anything while drawing? If so, what

12. Easiest part of body to draw

13. A creator who you admire but whose work isn't your thing

14. Any favorite motifs

15. *Where* do you draw (don't drop your ip address this just means do you doodle at a park or smth)

16. Something you are good at but don't really have fun doing

17. Do you eat/drink when drawing? if so, what

18. An estimate of how much art supplies you've broken

19. Favorite inanimate objects to draw (food, nature, etc.)

20. Something everyone else finds hard to draw but you enjoy

21. Art styles nothing like your own but you like anyways

22. What physical exercises do you do before drawing, if any

23. Do you use different layer modes

24. Do your references include stock images

25. Something your art has been compared to that you were NOT inspired by

26. What's a piece that got a wildly different interpretation from what you intended

27. Do you warm up before getting to the good stuff? If so, what is it you draw to warm up with

28. Any art events you have participated in the past (like zines)

29. Media you love, but doesn't inspire you artistically

30. What piece of yours do you think is underrated

albanenechi

Drawing bases & pose references pt 130 💖

Finally more poses yayy, hope u like!

There are 3 extra drawings for patrons, including a couple that are a little spicier 🫶

ratbuchet

psa for fellow formal wear enthusiasts

nathanierblog

McCalls Pikachu Plush 2512 Sewing Pattern

This thing has been out of print for like, 26 years and some of us want to make chubby classic pikachu so uh... I figure it's okay to share bc it's kinda hard to get your hands on the remaining physical copies.

Bonus points: Aelith made some embroidery/applique files for it too

Remade by AeilithArt so that we could use the pattern without like, destroying it. It's not exact since it's trace, but it's p much the same

butchlinkle

drawing extreme angle moufs is the bane of my existence so i made a mouth model for csp ^_^

Make illustrations, manga, comics and animation with Clip Studio Paint, the artist’s tool for drawing and painting. All you need for drawing

^ youll need v4 and 500cp to download it from the asset store but if you dont have that ill put it up on kofi tomorrow as pay what you want and itll be the glb file itself which can be brought into more versions and also you can adjust the shape keys in blender and then re export for the versions that dont support shape keys. but i have a migraine so you have to come back tomorrow for that

butchlinkle

okie it is up on ko-fi now! :]

CSP has many tools for assisting with drawing the head at different angles, but for me, the most difficult thing to draw is the mouth in dif

teomodo

art books on the internet archive for you

morpho books

figure drawing for all it's worth (+ creative illustration)

framed ink

will eisner comics and sequential art

will eisner graphic storytelling and visual narrative

understanding comics (+ making comics)

folder of various animation production art

burne hogarth drawing dynamic hands

perspective for comic book artists

michael mattesi force drawing

the animator's survival kit

color and light james gurney

be free

bedupolker

I've recommended this one before, but for all the non-human vertebrate likers out there... the art of animal drawing

ozempicofficial

factual-fantasy

danidarkarts

@factual-fantasy

fynori

i'd like to add that the shadow color isnt necessarily dictated entirely by the primary light source, but the bounce light! so for the example of a sunny environment, the reason the shadows are blue are because of the light from the blue sky reflects across the environment; but, if the character were to be under tree cover, the bounce light would be coming from the leaves and thus the shadow would look greener.

danidarkarts

Yee yee!!! You got it right on the nose!

Bounce light is something I didn't cover but I adore it!

Gotta work on my bounce light 💪

eskiworks

Yay for local color and color relativity! I love seeing artists continuing to share and learn from each other!

khorrorshow

Oh, uh. I guess I should mention that I’ve made this thing. Three months after release sounds like a perfect time. Untitled Tile Painter is a quirky little drawing tool that lets you lay down funky geometric Bauhaus-inspired patterns. It’s 50% a useful thing for actual people and 50% me wanting to stretch my UMG muscles on something. It’s also a little bit like a control panel of an alien spaceship, as far as UX goes. Give it a go, if it looks like your kind of thing! It’s entirely free and all generated images are yours to keep and use as you see fit.

roach-works

holy shit this is incredible

sabertoothwalrus

Someone has probably already asked you this but do you have any tips on studying/understanding perspective? I keep trying to find resources to learn but none of them really stick or are actually useful

so I'm hoping that your issue isn't just figuring out the difference between 1-point, 2-point, and 3-point perspective and how it works, because there are tons and tons of resources available for that, and I'm guessing what people tend to get tripped up on is what you're supposed to be doing with your grid.

I'm definitely far from being an expert on understanding perspective, but I'll share some of the things that helped ME finally Get It.

Things like eye level and different camera angles can be a GREAT tool to use when doing a comic or storyboard between multiple characters of different heights!! I actually drew an example of this exact thing for a friend about a month ago (I used adventure time characters bc they're easy to draw and have a good height variety):

You can use camera angles like this to add variety to your shots, and even use it to help convey something emotional (using a down-shot on a character to show that they FEEL small, use an up-shot on a character to make them look more intimidating, etc etc)

hope this helps!

lesbianlinkle-moved

speech bubble lettering tips!

rielzero

Ohh, so I was looking at my storage and found these! I originally shared them on twitter before yeeting the platform. Anyway, feel free to use! Art memes for your oc :D

stardynamite

Reblogging this so that i dont forget to use it someday lmao

insekiwii

*cough*

balaclava-trismegistus

i love love love when artists put a bunch of effort into like human anatomy and facial features and light rendering and drawing fabric folds and shadows and texture and then when they draw a gun they do this

bloodofgrapes

Do you hate drawing firearms? Let me introduce my good friend 3d Warehouse to you! There's a pretty good database of 3d models that you can rotate and play with in real time, no program download required! I've seen all sorts of real world firearms, as well as fictional guns from popular video games and other media

Don't ever be afraid to trace guns--it's not art theft or stealing, it's saving yourself an enormous amount of time for the exact same end result. Additionally, if you're unsure of what firearms to draw, the Internet Movie Firearms Database has a collection of basically all firearms used in any media ever, from anime to film to video games and everything in between

fallout-lou-begas

And of course if you can't trace a gun directly then this website is still perfect for getting a reference photo of the exact right gun from the exact right angle!

butchlinkle

Comics & How I Approach Planning, Panelling, & Thumbnailing them

If this post seems familiar, it's because it's a rewrite of a post I originally wrote in 2021 ^_^

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Step 1: Script

Rats squeak and scrounge around on the cold, damp stone floor. There's a leak in the ceiling, and their wet fur does little to help with the dank, musky smell that permeates the air. A delicate ear twitches, and the rats scatter—disappearing who knows where. A door swings open and the dim lantern light flickers in casting a warm glow on the cold hard floor, "Don't try any funny business, demon," a voice spits, accompanied by heavy footfalls that echo through the cold corridor. "Why," another voice responds, "I wouldn't dream of it, darling." A playful lilt dances its way through the words.

I write my script in prose format, but it really doesn't matter what it looks like—just that you write one at all! It's super important!

I read a tweet once, it was aimed at indie game devs:

It's about the common tendency that independant creators have of starting projects, then getting a new idea that seems so much more exciting than the one that's currently being worked on.

But more than that, it's the concept that while an idea is there in your head, it's filled with infinite possibility—there's so many different things that it could be, because it isn't anything at all yet.

But when you start working on it, it ceases to have infinite possibility because suddenly, it already is something.

You could not write anything out at all and jump right into drawing a comic. I've done this many times before—I'd be like, "it's only going to be like four pages, I don't need to write a script for this!"

But, in going from idea straight to comic, all those infinite possibilities have to suddenly become...just one. And if you find that you didn't pick the best possibility for that page or that panel...

Take it from me, it's much harder to rearrange panels you've drawn and keep everything fitting on that one page, than it is to rearrange sentences in a text document!

So, I think, it's important to confront the different ways you could approach an idea as early as possible with the least amount of commitment to one way.

Write it down, feel your idea out!!

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Step 2: Find your beats

It ended up being 8 beats which, in my experience with the dimensions I work at, at most on a single page I can only fit about 14 panels. That's really pushing it though, on average my pages will only have 7-8! This one being 8 hits that nice comfortable zone

I prefer to keep the higher panel counts for high activity pages—the more panels you have, the smaller they have to be and thus the less time readers will be focused on them.

If there's a lot of high action content happening, lots of smaller panels will create that du-du-du rapid fire high action feel, but if it's a low action page, having lots of panels might make things feel hectic and rushed when it doesn't want to be!

Too few panels though, and things will feel very slow. I have some pages that only have one to four panels, these are during very slow moments when I want there to be a lingering feeling.

Just something to think about when dividing up your script! For me, 8 is a nice average not-too-much is happening, without being too slow to progress things.

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Step 3: divide the page & arrange your beats

So when I'm thumbnailing my comics and figuring out the panel layout, I don't think of panels as boxes I'm arranging on the page—instead, I'm splitting the page up into sections.

It's worth bearing in mind, as you read a comic, panels in a row will be read one after the other, but when you go to an entirely new row, your eyes have to go all the way back to the other side of the page.

That means there's a slight disconnect between the panel on the right side, and the next panel on the left side.

If a series of beats are connected to each other, I try to keep all of them on the same row, and if a beat is not very connected to the other beat before it, I might put its panel onto a new row. As well, I'll split a panel in half horizontally if they're directly connected to each other, or if they're happening at the same time!

But, grouping beats together, then dividing the page into rows that can hold these beats together is how I approach panelling a page

For further reading, I recommend picking up scott mccloud's books "understanding comics" & "making comics"! He has a lot of very useful things to say about the different types of panels, how the progression of time works in comics, and stuff like that... essential reads for anyone making comics!

Step 3.5: A short detour on composing interesting pages

I'll let you in on a little (not so) secret—the version of Heart of the Storm that ultimately went live in May of 2024 is not the first attempt I had at drawing it.

My first attempt at drawing it was in 2020, and that version never got released to the public... because I went into it with zero planning! No thumbnails, nothing. Before long I found myself incredibly frustrated with the pages I was drawing, but I'd drawn so much and reworking it all was incredibly difficult! Ultimately I stepped away from it to explore making comics differently with some low stakes fancomics.

Some pages from those short comics. I think the third one was when I really started to get a handle on things!

I learnt a lot from these little comics, and critically with these comics I thumbnailed them and I wrote a script before I drew the final pages, something I was not doing before. I meant it earlier when I said I think it's important to figure out all the different ways to approach things early on... I was speaking from experience! A lack of planning made comics difficult and frustrating and the results just not what I wanted.

So after a much more pleasant comicking experience by planning things out from the start, I decided that with HotS I should start again with a more concrete plan this time. And so I did, and I never regret it!

In writing, the common advice goes "show, don't tell," and this applies to many different aspects of writing, but especially to describing things. The other advice is to describe using all five senses—sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste.

With these experiments especially I discovered I prefer to write my scripts in prose format—one because I grew up reading a lot of books for one, but more importantly for two because I think this is just as important to do in comics as it is in prose, and writing it in prose first helps me make sure I think about these things.

This is not to say that I think you should write your script in prose—how you write your script is entirely up to you and your personal preferences! As I said earlier—what matters is that you write one. But what I am saying is to think about the 5 senses while you write it in whatever form that is.

Of course, we only really have sight and sound to work with in a comic, we can't describe the way something smells or how it tastes because we can only use visuals and the occasional onomatopeia, but how you choose to frame your panels will communicate different things!

Compare now then, the original page I was drawing in 2020, to the final page I ended up with:

I think it's safe to say that the redone page is more immersive. This isn't because I increased the panel count (indeed, there are many panels that I cut in the revision), but because I was more thoughtful about the panels themselves and what I was communicating with them!

The dank, musky smell and scent of damp fur may not be something I can tell my readers about in a picture—but if I focus on the puddles on the floor, and show the rats' wet fur... they'll feel how dank it is anyway.

So, while composing the panels in your comic, consider what you're communicating through them, and whether you're telling what happens, or if you're showing your readers what it feels like to be there and what your characters are going through.

It'll help you compose more interesting pages!

Step 4: Thumbnailing time babeyyyy

The most important thing to understand about thumbnails is you are not creating a finished picture, you are thinking about how you want to approach the finished picture, especially its composition.

Thumbnailing is about thinking visually, so be prepared to erase things at any moment, as you might think of something better the next time you look at it!

Exactly how refined your thumbnails look is going to vary depending on your purposes and how much thinking you want to do in your thumbnailing pass. Myself personally, I like it if when I come to blow up my thumbnail to page size and start drawing the actual page to not have to think about a single thing, which results in my thumbnails doubling as a sketch and going through more than one pass. For most people, they'll have one pass and exclusively focus on planning the layout in their thumbnails.

The key thing however, is even though personally I do multiple passes with my thumbnails, they still begin with the same initial rough noncomittal phase where I can and will delete things without a second thought, and indeed even at their most refined I will still delete a thumbnail if I don't think it's working. You're not making a beautiful sketch, you're thinking about how you want to approach tackling the final page.

This is why I do multiple passes myself. As previously established, I started out doing zero planning and ended up with pages I hated, so now I do perhaps a little too much planning haha, but it works for me! I imagine for most people however, you'll be fine with a little less planning. Here's how my thumbnail passes breakdown:

In anycase as you can see, first I focus on how I'm going to layout the page and frame the contents of each panel, then I come to the value pass and I think about how I am going to utilise value on the page to guide the eye and provide clarity for foreground and background elements, and then if I do a colour script I think about how I'm going to utilise colour to set the mood and retain those values I established before.

The goal here is never to make a nice image, but to make something understandable and thought out. It's a plan of attack! By the time I draw the page itself, I know exactly what will go where and how I'm going to execute it. I'll admit freely, not every page I make is as meticulously planned as the rest, they don't need to be! The first few pages got special treatment as I wanted to make a good impression, haha! But while the final thumbnails may be rougher for some pages than others, once I come to draw a page, I always know what I'm doing with it, because I took the time to plan it out first.

I should also note that I don't thumbnail pages in isolation, and I don't recommend you do either! Thumbnailing entire chapters like I do is a slow process and one that won't suit everyone, but I do recommend that you thumbnail in groups of around 10 pages so you can shift thing around between pages and take the time to get a feel for how they're read in succession.

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For one last note, I recently received a comment from one of my readers thanking me for the inclusion of the prose transcripts on Heart of the Storm as, having read (the original version of) this post, being able to see the prose alongside the direct transcripts and the final page I drew helped a great deal in demystifying the act of translating words into a comic page.

I hadn't even considered this, I just added that for accessibility reasons! But that's such a wonderful side effect and I mention this here because if you'd like to see further examples of the script -> page process, you might be interested in looking at some of the pages on my comic's website and expanding the transcript boxes underneath.

In anycase, I hope that was enlightening! Best of luck with your own comics ❤️