macnry

Ry // 25 // 3D Animation student :)

[yawpyawp]

every day my stupid spaceship comic grows in complexity like a fractal

[macnry-art]

It turns out the world's best and grossest homunculus is a year old so I had to celebrate this new knowledge

[macnry-art]

“How do you know what to do with [the kids]?” “‘Cause I was one.” “How did you know what to do with Jack?” “It’s what my brother used to do with me.”

[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

[ohcorny]

today's comic advice posting from the big boy published graphic novelist: stop thoughtlessly shading your comics. stop it. i see you reaching for the multiply layer, i see you selecting that slightly purple, slightly blue color to add shadows to the edges of your characters. oh my god get your hand away from the airbrush.

comics is a storytelling medium, which means that it's also a medium for conveying information. you are conveying information about the scene to me.

what information is your shading conveying, and what does that contribute to the scene? i mean, ideally you're telling me where the light is coming from, but...do i actually have to care about that? if the lighting isn't key to the mood of the scene...does it need to be there?

we're outside. things would have shadows, because there's a light source (The Sun) but don't you understand that just from the fact the characters are clearly drawn outside? does putting soft shadows under their arms and at the bottoms of their shirts convey that better? or is it already clear without that?

we're inside. there's probably some light coming in from the window, or maybe from a bulb in the ceiling. is there a mood you want to convey with the scene? is the light source contributing to the mood? is the light only coming in from the window, to remind us the room is dark? is there a spotlight on someone? is the lighting significant? if it's not, what is the shading telling me that i couldn't otherwise guess?

and in the same realm of that previous comic example i just used, and this one i will be explicitly prescriptivist about--if you MUST include shading, please don't put it on the panels where the characters are doing the big cartoonish expressions. it doesn't look good. it Just doesn't look good. you're turning a 2 dimensional shape into a 3 dimensional object for no reason other than 'well i did it to the rest of the comic' and it looks bad. it draws attention to itself, it makes everything stiff and constructed, you lose the animation inherent to the gesture. you are doing disney vhs cover shit to me.

but this all isn't to say that you should never ever involve shading in your comics. but it's more that you need to use it intelligently, not just because you think it 'would' be there. there 'would' be one million more wrinkles in everybody's shirts than we ever want to draw and nobody's advising you to do that in comics. but if there should be one million wrinkles in a shirt, to draw attention to the fact that it's wrinkled, that's a different story.

and comics are about telling a story.

if you found this advice useful, or liked the look of the examples i was using, you should read my comic.

[macnry-art]

Mini Xylo – he's like 2" tall in my sketchbook

[shithowdy]

notes on gesture

[macnry-art]

Self-indulgent comic for the Fermata + Wooden Overcoats fans (which is…probably just me 😅). I think Antigone would thrive as a Pale Augur. Living and working among other people who spend their days working with corpses in a dark underground hall? She’d have the time of her life. She would probably even make friends!

[macnry-art]

First go at drawing one of my comic characters :)

[metalheadsagainstfascism]

How to draw Black characters. Because it's way too obvious when you drew a white person and gave them Black skin.

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRg6YsKN/

-fae

[patrochilles-or-bust]

If you're an artist please listen to her. PLEASE. 🙏🏾 I cannot stress these tips enough.

[macnry-art]

Joslyn and Arlo from @waterimark’s comic Moontown! One must imagine Joslyn happy and not riddled with anxiety

Welcome to Moontown, population 14. We hope you enjoy your stay.

[shoomlah]

how do you consistently draw the same character without it looking weird or off every different time?? also how do i coordinate faces, i always make the eyes too far apart or too big or too small or make the mouth too close to the nose or chin edge. If you have any advice I'd really appreciate it since it looks like you have your art shit figured out 🙏

Oh man SO so much of it is just practice, and you're not alone! I honestly think everyone struggles with a sort of "generification" of their characters' features the more they draw them, even seasoned professionals. There's a tendency to just sort of average everything out into an unrecognizable mush over time, and it takes a lot of conscious effort to push back against that.

Here are a couple tips and tricks that I've found to be helpful over the years:

Make turnarounds and model sheets. There's a reason animation/game studios do this, and it is because we are all still bad at drawing a consistent face. Despite being gainfully employed. What are we, graphic novelists?? We wish. Anyway it's a great way to familiarize yourself with your character's face from multiple angles, and it gives you a single source of truth to return to anytime you need a refresher:

Gather real-life reference. Anytime I'm designing a character I'm pulling together a ton of reference of actual people who look, to some degree, like the character in my head. It's always a collection of analogues, never just a single person, but it can be a great cheat sheet for understanding how your character might move, emote, etc:

Make a 3D model. I know it seems daunting, but with the advent of programs like Blender and Nomad Sculpt it's becoming remarkably more accessible. Heck, even James Gurney was sculpting maquettes out of clay for Dinotopia back in the day! It doesn't have to be particularly detailed—just a sort of proportionate lump will do—but it's another great way to have dynamic reference that you can rotate and light accordingly:

Practice, practice, practice. Make expression sheets for your character! Either right there on the spot, just start drawin' expressions, or you can slowly collect drawings of your character that you like, as you draw them, and compile them all in one place for your own reference. Need to draw your character's head from a weird angle? Maybe you've already drawn it before and you can copy your own homework! Doesn't count as stealing when the call's coming from inside the house 😎

I'd love to pretend there's a magical point where you can just immediately rotate your character's head in your brain like some sort of photorealistic apple in a twitter meme, but a lot of the time it's reference, hard work, and whole lotta repetition. 😐👍🏼

[succubusboyfriend]

being a self-taught artist with no formal training is having done art seriously since you were a young teenager and only finding out that you’re supposed to do warm up sketches every time you’re about to work on serious art when you’re fuckin twenty-five

[succubusboyfriend]

someone: oh yeah, do this exercise during your warm ups! it’ll help

me: my what

[suave-eddboy]

[thepioden]

What’s up I have an actual college degree in art and I was never ONCE taught to do warm ups.

[sparksel]

when i was in undergrad, it was kind of mentioned in and offhand way that we should do warmups, but we were never shown what that meant. And, y’know, we were young so it didn’t matter so much. 

Being older now and having an art job it’s…kind of essential. 

So: a quick primer for those of you who are like ‘ok but how do i actually go about doing this warmup thing.’ 

1) you may be tempted to do ‘a warmup drawing’ which is just a drawing that will take longer than it needed to and probably be frustrating and kind of bad because you didn’t warm up first. It’s tempting but always a trick your brain is playing on you! Do not trust! 

2) warmups will vary based on what feels good to you/what task you’re about to do/what motor skills you want to practice. That being said, some good standbys:

a) circles. Just a whole page of circles on whatever drawing surface you’re going to be using, whether that’s your tablet or your sketchbook or a drawing pad on an easel. For these circles you should make sure that you’re drawing from your shoulder and not your wrist. In fact, you want to be drawing from your shoulder rather than your wrist most of the time! forever! your wrist is delicate please preserve it! 

In order to ensure that you’re drawing from your shoulder, when you’re holding your pencil or whatever drawing tool you’re using, the only part of your hand that should be touching the drawing surface is part of the last two fingers–some people prefer the finger tips, but I tend to favor the first knuckles. Either way, the fingers should really be ghosting over the surface, providing guidance rather than support. 

I usually start with big circles and then go to smaller circles and lines of ellipses, and then try to fit circles and ellipses inside other shapes i’ve already drawn as a precision exercise, but i don’t do that unless i’m feeling loose

b) spirals! i don’t always do spirals, but if i’m stiff and the circles just aren’t cutting it, spirals are a good fall back. I start from the center and work outward, going both clockwise and counterclockwise until i feel comfortable with the whole range of motion. Some people really care about getting perfect spirals but for me it’s all about making sure i’m comfortable with how i’m moving so who really even cares about how the spirals look. Not me! 

c) lines! straight lines! in parallel! i do a mix of vertical, horizontal, and diagonal. These are often more from the elbow than the shoulder, especially if I’m working on a smaller surface. For this exercise, I recommend holding the drawing tool perpendicular with the surface

d) connect the dots. This is a precision and accuracy exercise and takes two forms. The first is to draw two dots and then draw a straight line between them. The second is to draw three dots and draw the curve that connects them. This sounds a lot simpler than it is in practice. Take time to ghost over the line you plan to draw before actually committing to your line. (I don’t always remember where I picked up my warm up exercises, but I’m pretty sure I got this one from Scott Robertson. His how to draw and how to render books are very technical but also accessible and worth checking out)

e) cubes, spheres, cones, and cylinders. These help get your brain into a more volumetric space. I draw multiples of each, rotating the forms around, and I’ll often take the time to do some rough shading on at least a few of them

f) spidermans! This one is really good if you’re going to be storyboarding or working on dynamic poses. Just fill a page full of spidermans doing all sorts of acrobatics. 

g) beans. I don’t do beans too much anymore, but I know a lot of people like it so I’m mentioning it here. Fill an area with different size bean shapes without lifting your pencil off the paper. 

h) short medium and long line repetition. draw a short, medium, and long line on your page, and then draw directly on top of them 8 to 12 times, doing your best to exactly trace what you’ve already drawing. Repeat with a wavy line. I’m bad at this one, which means I probably need to do it more. 

And there are lots more options too! Hit up youtube to see what other people recommend, put together your own go-to list, mix it up when you’re getting bored, etc. 

This is a long list, I know, but I usually don’t take more than 10 to 15 minutes to warm up, and I can warm up one handed while I’m drinking coffee, so, multitasking hurrah. 

Sometimes I’ll advance to a precision warmup and find that I haven’t loosened up enough yet; it’s totally ok to go back to an earlier exercise! Also, all of this has the added benefit of kind of ritualistically getting you into the drawing mode so even if I’m not feeling it before I start, by the time I’ve gotten to the end I’m usually Ready For Drawin’. Brain hacks. 

so, yeah! that’s a lot of words, but! Warmups are important! Save your joints, take less advil, do better drawings! 

[concerningwolves]

[t-c-art-inspiration]

How on earth are you supposed to draw from a sholder? might as well tell me to draw from the foot. It makes no sense

[justpickupthatpen]

https://youtu.be/pMC0Cx3Uk84

https://youtu.be/NBE-RTFkXDk

:3

[stupidlittlesideblog]

Reblogging to save a wrist

[justpickupthatpen]

[laserbobcat]

@kaito90

[macnry-art]

delightful bit from episode one

[macnry-art]

Quick drawings of the main cast! Not totally sold on Georgie and Chapman's designs so I'm sure those will evolve as I listen to the show.

[macnry-art]

OVERALLS FIXED IT

[macnry-art]

Quick drawings of the main cast! Not totally sold on Georgie and Chapman's designs so I'm sure those will evolve as I listen to the show.

[animalphotorefs]

Photos of the Day: common clownfish and their anemones

Artists creating derivative or transformative works (without AI) have blanket permission to use this and all photos in the repository as references, including works that will/may be sold.

The Animal Photo Reference Repository is an independent, permanently open-access project and funded entirely by donations, please consider contributing if you can!

**Patreon** -- **Ko-Fi**