My name is [REDACTED] but you can call me Idioticnerd or Cosmo!
If you did not read my "about me" post then you should know i dont care about pronouns all that much but my prefered are She/they.
I am a minor. Please respect my boundaries.
I post about rottmnt mainly but im not limited to only that. Ill pretty much post what i want when i want. I dont have a schedule because well, life is a bitch and you never know what she throws at you next.
I also post about my Rise!oc's.
DNI: T-CEST, RACISM, HOMOPHOBIA/TRANSPHOBIA, HATE, NSFW AND SO ON‼️‼️
This blog is safe for everyone so take your whiny bullshit elsewhere or keep it to youself. Thank you!😇
Here is my AU masterpost, i will add to it as i goˆˆ
Most of my posts will be chill but some might contain something that can be found triggering so i will add TW/CW as i find necessary. Feel free to speak up if you want me to add a TW on a post!
If you have a blank page and you follow me i will block it in case its a bot.
If you're wondering, yes i changed her a bit. I made her a tortie instead of a tabby. (The irony of her being a tortoiseshell living in a household of turtles lol
This silly gal needs a name and i need you all to vote for one!
I’m not kidding. This is the time to act. Yes I know it’s short notice , but so is Netflix trying to remove Rise without any heads up. Spread this! Repost it! Everywhere. And I mean, everywhere. TikTok, twitter, Reddit, insta, Facebook. Stream the show/movie all day tomorrow and Saturday. Let’s flash mob this!
We’re going full on guerrilla streaming. Do. Not. Let. Them. Win! Reblog. Share. Fight. Protect the art you love.
Rise isnt on netflix in my country which sucks but the movie is and im sure as hell not letting them take THAT away!!! RISE UP AND FIGHT WE WILL NOT LET THIS INJUSTICE HAPPEN!!!!
If you're wondering, yes i changed her a bit. I made her a tortie instead of a tabby. (The irony of her being a tortoiseshell living in a household of turtles lol
This silly gal needs a name and i need you all to vote for one!
FINAL EDIT HOPEFULLY: ALL DRIVES ARE UP, ALL EPISODES ARE 1080P! ENJOY!!!!!!!!
edit again: not a requirement or anything but if anyone can spare some cash as a thanks then here’s my kofi! i’ve got a car payment now so I appreciate any and everything :D
I wanted to write a long explanation, but it became dumb, so I'll just say it's a mishmash of identity diffusion, self-doubt, and anger at Splinter for failing to show the confused Leo a path in life, which led him to seek his own "master" and ultimately become confused. It let up in his old age, when the last wrinkle on his forehead could spell out the word "moron”
logged back into this account and was looking through my drafts and saw this ancient gem and im NEVER fixing the rest of their designs so ill just post it in case anyone wanted more tmnc loool
Does anyone have any good material on the study of lighting and shadows when it comes to art?
More specifically how light falls from different angles, what part of ur figure it hits and the different types of light and shadow.
And preferably something you can also use on a more cartoonish artstyle.
I want to actually understand my art better than i do now. And i wanna learn to place shadows and light correctly and not just guess or follow a general vibe.
Id really appreciate if anyone had something i could use as the reason Ive put off studying this stuff is because it felt so broad and impossible to grasp. Help is greatly appreciated🙏
Can i ask for some tips when it comes to rendering?
I really love how you render ur art it just looks so nice and gorgeous!
Often when i take a knack at rendering it just ends up looking smudged and generally just really messy- (hence why i usually use a simple style that doesnt require rendering)
But im always looking to improve:3
(also what app do you use to draw?)
Hello!
First of all, thank you so much!! That's so sweet of you to say 😊 I'm glad you like my rendering; it's one of my favorite parts of my drawings, both the process of rendering and also the finished product!
Second of all, I use CSP (Clip Studio Paint) EX for Windows (Version 1.5 I believe. Later versions are way too expensive and this one works beautifully)
Now, for some rendering tips (more like a small rendering tutorial disguised as tips haha):
We’ll start with a basic, good ol’ fashioned Leonardo Ninja Turtle:
Flat colors and ready to be rendered!
First:
We decide a light source:
For this piece, I chose above and slightly to his right (my left). It’s the angle I use most often and it’s fairly simple.
Second:
We start shading using hard and soft edges.
To begin, we first make a new Multiply layer directly on to of the color layer and clip it (So nothing drawn outside of the edge of the flats of the Color layer shows up on the Multiply layer):
Now let me introduce you to the lasso tool:
Idc what's been said about diamonds; the lasso tool is a girl’s best friend. Crank stabilization WAY up and you’re GOLDEN.
We’ll use the lasso tool to get the sharp and soft edges we need for rendering. You CAN use exclusively sharp like they do in cartoons to make animating easier and more cohesive frame to frame:
And this looks great! You can definitely go with this; cel shading is a very popular choice and it always looks very clean. But if you want something with a little more depth, you use sharp AND soft edges. Because light and shadow in real life often start sharp and then bleed into softer edges.
When you use the lasso tool, it allows for sharp edges along where you’ve selected and softer edges inside the selection.
We'll use Leo’s browridges as an example:
On the Multiply layer, make a selection following the shape of the underside of Leo’s brows.
Then, get an airbrush tool. I used magenta just because I like how it looks when it’s multiplied on different colors. It’s not as saturated when multiplied, but still vibrant enough to add a little interest to the shading. You can pick a different color, but mostly I would encourage you to just not use black or grey; those make things look washed out and muddy. (Black and grey work great for monochromatic pieces ofc haha).
With the airbrush tool, lightly shade the UPPER part of the selection. The light is casting DOWN on Leo, so it would be darkest starting directly on the underside of his brows and slowly fading as the shadow reached the bridge of his “nose”/beak.
Then we’ll shade the side of his head. Follow the shape of the side of his face and toward the crown of his head. Shade heavily at the bottom and lighter at the top. This will give Leo’s head over all more volume. Think of it in terms of a cube:
Objects and people are made up of “planes.” Depending on which plane is facing away from the light, that is the one that gets shaded the most. But there are also areas on the head that "slope" more gently into other planes, so don't shade those edges as sharply; leave room in your selections for those areas so the airbrush can fade naturally.
Now those were basically examples of cast shadows and form shadows. Cast shadows being the shadows that come FROM a protrusion, starting sharp and feathering out, and form shadows being the shadows that cling to the SIDE of the protrusion, gradually darkening until you reach the edge of the subject matter.
Here’s another example of a cast shadow:
In this case, I'm shaping my lasso to be closer to the underside of his chin on his RIGHT side than his left. So when I used the airbrush, it hits that angle and gives the cast shadow a sharper edge CLOSER to where it starts, and then as it moves away from the light sources, I've left room for the airbrush to do what airbrushes to best and get softer.
Here’s another example of a FORM shadow:
In this case, I'm mostly guiding where the shadow ends by the edge of his arm (selecting AROUND his plastron which sits in front). Then the shadow “starts” where the light would start to fade.
Another way I shade is by taking a smaller paint brush and painting along the edges of shallower protrusions, as you can see with Leo’s lip and mask tails. I use this when the shadow is going to be too thin to justify taking the painstaking time to lasso the edge.
Third:
Lighting. Ngl I get pretty lazy with this one most of the time haha
Remember that cube from before? Well the front and top planes are much lighter than the side one, BUT the top one is lighter than the front. The lightsource for that cube is coming more from the top.
For Leo, we’re going to lighten his “top planes” (I know I drew the light source more to the side just ignore that haha):
We’ll start by adding an Add (Glow) layer on top of both the Color and Multiply layer and ALSO setting it to clipping:
(ignore that I have yet to name the layer, I definitely got very sloppy for this tutorial haha)
Then we airbrush some light on top of Leo's beak/cheeks and his scalp, making it lighter towards his right (my left)
Here is how his completed Light and Shading Rendering looks with all the color stripped away. You can check this easily by making a new NORMAL layer on top of your colors and bucket filling the whole thing with one color (I go with grey). Then you turn on the handy-dandy clipping tool and voilà! The shape of the color layer stays while being completely desaturated for your reference.
Fourth:
Now it’s time to give him a little pop with bounce lighting!
I usually don’t put much time into bounce lighting, but just a little bit adds SO much.
First we add an Add (Glow) clipping layer on top of all of our previous ones so far.
Then we just airbrush a little color to the very darkest and farthest-from-the-light edges of his shading. For the bounce lighting's hue, I usually pick the opposite end of the spectrum to the lighting color. Baby blue in this case :)
If you want to do more of a second light source instead of bounce lighting, do it the same way you would source lighting but from a different angle and with a different color.
Side note:
Now, I’m not going to go into excruciating detail about how I rendered EVERY PART (this post was supposed to be “tips”, I’m already getting so carried away lol 😭). But another tip is to look up references. Especially face and muscle references. You may or may not have noticed, but Leo's bicep on the right side of the picture looks different in the original picture. That's because I still can't draw muscles entirely by memory, and couldn't figure out how to shade what I'd drawn. So I eventually looked up reference. Like I should have done in the first place XD I changed the shape and rendered according the references I'd pulled up.
And look up videos. I’ve learned so much from so many different art tutorials on YouTube. Get specific when searching for tutorials; in this case, you would look up videos on how to render and shade. There are so many other tutorials on other specific subjects too, like lineweight and dynamic poses and clothing, etc.
Fifth:
Add some finishing touches
REMEMBER TO FLIP YOUR CANVAS:
If there was only one thing I could ever impart to beginning artists, it would be USE YOUR MIRROR TOOL. If you're drawing traditionally, use an actual mirror, or hold your paper up to the light. And use it all throughout the drawing process, not just the end!
This way I was able to see not only if Leo was off balance or wonky in his design, but also in his rendering. In the picture above, I noticed his left side (right side when mirrored, my right when not– okay, y’know what? THE DARK SIDE. Let’s just call it that now. The dark side of the Leo XD) I noticed that his dark side wasn’t, well, dark enough. So I added a bit more shading with a giant airbrush and didn’t do any lasso-ing, just deepened the over all shadows on that side a little.
Then I played around with all the layer percentages until they were to my liking:
Highlights:
Add another layer on top of your lineart layer and use a white pen or pencil for this one!
Not everyone does highlights in the eyes, and that's totally cool, but you'd be surprised how much those little white dots really make a character's countenance pop and come to life. I just personally like them a lot :)
Then there are of course the parts of the characters outfit or accessories that need highlights: anything plastic or glass or metal, like blades, beads, belt buckles, jewelry, elaborate prosthetic arms, etc. just as random non-specific examples, y'know.
FILTERS YAYY:
For color grading, first I have to move all layers that make up the main drawing (Leo) into a single folder. Then I do a Color clipping layer on top of that folder and adjust the percentage to make all of his colors a little more cohesive.
And the I add a Noise Overlay layer (no clipping, I want the noise to show up on the background!) and play with the opacity to add a little bit of texture (one of my favorite “cheat” codes!)
Aaaand here he is all finished!!
There are so many other sources for different techniques and styles of rendering, this is just how I do it. But I do recommend learning from multiple sources and experimenting with different methods. Eventually, you'll start landing on something that works best for YOU and also achieves the look you want. There is no ‘right way’ to draw; you collect and create your own methods. I'm still developing my own methods and have grown a lot more in recent years thanks to things as simple (not easy, but simple) as studying the artists I like and practicing new and hard things.
And be patient with yourself! Drawings like these take time and LEARNING how to draw them also takes time! But you're already way ahead by being open to learn. By WANTING to learn. Keep learning always and forever. It's how you continue to grow. And I promise, no matter how fast or slow your development, you WILL see improvement over time.
Thank you so, so much for the ask!! I got so excited to answer it because it made me so happy that someone would want to learn how to render like I do. Maybe TOO excited haha. I started to overthink how much detail I wanted to put into this, to the point where I wasn’t making ANY sort of answer. For that, I apologize. But I simplified everything down into my basic methods, and I think everything turned out a lot better than I had anticipated. I thoroughly enjoyed making this post, and I hope you find it helpful!!
I have been struggling with her design.. FOR 6 MONTHS!... I finally landed on something im actually really happy with.
An update as well her name is Melora or Mel as she is mostly called. Ill drop a full body of her when i get through the hell of designing an outfit for her.
Just wanted to share this head piece of her because i was so happy with the result and it was a win i really needed.
