Megamoth Studio

a collection of works both for and by the artists of the megamoth studio classes

[steveahn]

Action Adventure Cinematic Storyboard Workshop / SPRING 2020

https://artofsteveahn.com/item/action-adventure-cinematic-storyboard-workshop-full-class

This online 8-week course workshop will share basic principles and fundamentals of cinematic storyboarding and demonstrate how to apply them into an actual storyboard execution. From story beat breakdown to composition to laying out camera lenses to character acting and more, from basic technical skills to the creative process, the important key knowledge of cinematic storyboarding will be discussed step by step.

DATE

January 14th ~ March 3rd, 2020

INSTRUCTORS

Lecture - Steve Ahn is an animation director and artist. His work credits include director at Voltron Legendary Defender, assistant director at The Legend of Korra, and storyboard artist for various shows such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Ben 10, Generator Rex, and many more in the action-adventure genre. Currently, Steve is working on his first independent animated series, Blossom Detective Holmes.

Assignment Critique - Sung Shin is a storyboard artist. His credits include Voltron Legendary Defender, Young Justice, Big Hero 6 TV Series, Guardians of Galaxy, Ben 10 Omniverse, Star Wars Galaxy of Adventures and many more. He has recently joined the Blizzard Cinematic Team.

ABOUT

There are many others who want to learn action storyboards and to build a career based on it. But there aren’t many classes that teach you this kind of storyboarding. This workshop is for those of you who are pursuing a storyboard career in the animation industry. Those who want to strengthen basic storyboarding techniques. Those who are art students. Those who want to work in action-adventure shows. Especially those who live far away from the Hollywood animation industry and have struggled to find an opportunity to learn.

Students will receive a website link to view and watch the workshop lecture, and an exercise based on the topic shared from the workshop, sharpen basic technical skills and tackle challenging story sequences like a conversation in drama, 1-on-1 martial arts fights, chases, large-scale action montages and more. The students will have access to rewatch the lecture videos for 1 year.

Each week during the workshop, the students will have the assignment to do, and they will receive a critique video based on their assignments.

Once you purchase this course, you will have a promo to unlock one more NEW PERSPECTIVE LECTURE by guest instructor, William Niu (BG Designer from The Legend of Korra & Voltron Legendary Defender) for FREE!

THIS WORKSHOP INCLUDES

1 YR SUBSCRIPTION OF THE COURSE, 8 VIDEO LECTURES + 1 FREE PERSPECTIVE CLASS VIDEO

8 ASSIGNMENT CRITIQUES

CURRICULUM

Lecture 1 - Directional Scene Design

Lecture 2 - Storytelling Through Composition I

Lecture 3 - Storytelling Through Composition II

Lecture 4 - Storytelling Through The Eye of Camera Lens

Lecture 5 - Montage Sequence

Lecture 6 - Drama Sequence with dialogues

Lecture 7 - Action/Fight/Battle Sequence

Lecture 8 - Big Group Action Sequence

More Info & Enrollment at https://artofsteveahn.com/item/action-adventure-cinematic-storyboard-workshop-full-class

[mayakern]

last night on twitter i got asked about how to draw fat bodies so first off – some references here

these are some quick sketch of some different fat bodies. this isn’t exhaustive but you can see my construction lines and how to play with some proportions of how fat lays. also! don’t forget that even fat people have bony landmarks and knowing how to handle that is important for balance/shape.

bony landmarks = places where you can see bone pressing against skin. elbows, wrists, hips, knees, ankles, etc. for me it’s really important to have good visual rhythm and to work with round lines vs straight lines for fat vs. bone to have a good flow for fat bodies.

like with drawing any body, you’re going to be making some aesthetic stylization decisions. don’t let internalized fatphobia dictate those decisions. instead, think about creating appeal thru honesty and genuine love for your subject.

we are all different shapes and have different proportions and fat will settle on different people differently.

also: FAT PEOPLE ARE NOT ORBS!! yes, use round lines. but fat has weight to it. perfect circles will look stiff and awkward and usually when i see fat characters drawn too circularly and without a feeling of weight/gravity i assume it’s fetish art.

i always feel reluctant to make any sort of “fat body drawing guide” because i don’t think i can explain my process well enough and i don’t feel like i’m a good teacher because a lot of what i do is just instinct and flow. BUT lots of people always ask me so i hope this helps.

[gahdamnpunk]

YOO SPREAD THE WORD PEOPLE

[ryokoson]

Save a marker, SPREAD THE WORD!!!!

[oolathurman]

It’s called the crayola colorcycle program! As on its FAQ, they mention the following:

“Crayola ColorCycle will accept all brands of plastic markers, not just Crayola markers. That includes dry erase markers and highlighters! ColorCycle will eliminate placing hundreds of tons of markers into landfills.”

There do seem to be some limits, however, as far as I can tell, anyone can ship in a box of markers. “Any sturdy cardboard box with minimal outer markings will work. The more markers you ship, the more efficient this program will be. We suggest a minimum of 100 markers and a maximum of up to 40 pounds.”

[lizzieinthesky]

Also, look for the Crayon Initiative. 

Their whole things work with used, donated crayons they melt and make new ones to donate to children’s hospitals. 

[zero-initiative]

This is a really good idea, especially if you are trying to find an economic friendly way to get markers or crayons out of your abode without throwing them in the trash

[black-wolf-spirit-art]

This was another short comic I did for the Comics and Sequential art class back in the beginning of 2018.

This story is about a 16 year old girl named Anna who crash lands her escape pod on an alien planet after the human colonists space craft she was traveling on with her father was destroyed in an engine malfunction.

She is then nursed back to health by a tribe of locals and shown around their village and land.

The story and title was also inspired in part by this song

Next>>

[insertdisc5]

Hello! I hope you dont mind me asking, but how do you draw those amazing black and white comics? (Coffee and The Goddess comics come to mind!) I love the way you do them and would love to know the process you go thru!

this is a pretty broad question and im guessing/hoping you meant “how do you color in black and white in your comics” so have a few random tips about values and paneling and stuff i guess

thank you

[sourearth]

hey! i thought id share a trick i learned at uni for making interesting colour palettes - that you can use for character design or art in general! it’s super simple and learning this was honestly a revelation to me

just have a look online for photos you like - it can literally be anything, just pick one that is visually appealing to you!

[source]

then simply take it into an image editing software, blur it up a bit and pick 4-5 colours out of it like so:

it works best when you pick colours with a decent variation in value!

doing this is really helpful for working out colour palettes fast and easy! it can allow you to knock out something like this real quick (the above example i put on number 12) and decide which is the most effective

i hope this is helpful to someone!

[shencomix]

[rtilrtil]

Late last year I wanted to start a series of short tutorials called Tip Jar, as a way of saying thanks to my fans and giving back to my patrons. This is the first of the series I have made, showing my technique on quickly filling in lineart so you can get to painting without coloring outside the lines faster. 

Someday I hope to turn these into video tutorials when I have the income and the time, but for now I hope that I will be able to share useful tips in this infographic format.

Full tutorial image

Support me on Patreon

[americanninjax-deactivated20191]

This is exactly how I do my flats.

[chillyfeetsteak]

This is how I do my flats! Really quick and easy!

[shoomlah]

Worth sharing because this is exaaaaactly how I do my flats!  I get this question all the time when I post my process videos, and this explains it far more succinctly than I ever could. :)

[blindsprings]

This is also how I do my flats but unfortunately with lines that are see through (or sketchier) you get a lot of jaggies all over the place. So I play with channels!

So alternatively step 1.5 is to click on the channels tab, and create a new layer. Fill the areas that you magic wand(ed) with black (leaving the characters/whatever you want to fill white). Click out of the marquee and use gaussian blur (i use 3.0 on a huge image, sometimes you need to go down for a smaller image)

Then you go to image/adjustments/levels and put in–and this is where I sound like a mad scientist–88 1.42 and 122. Which cleans up the edges so they’re pretty clean! 

Then all you do is click on the circle at the bottom of the channels area (”load channel as selected) and then go back in to layers and click on a layer to load your original view again! and then do the rest of the steps. It will cause you to clean up corners a lot but it saves me a whole heck of time since i have a rougher inking style. This step takes all of 3 minutes at most but otherwise I’d have to base everything by hand :I Or spend a good 40 minutes cleaning up jaggies.

TL;DR alternative step if you have rougher/sketchier lines.

Oh! Since my lines often don’t join correctly, I create a layer underneath and fill any holes before i do selection (with “select all layers” ticked off) which is admittedly tedious but again. Way quicker than doing it by hand! So yeah if you see this and are like oh gee whiz this doesn’t work with how I do stuff, try this added step?

(this is also how to do a stroke around an image that is cleaner than what you get from the layer styles box– I adapted these steps originally from a DA tutorial on how to get clean strokes!)

[mueritos]

quick character design tips because a pal asked for it on insta

[campaignagainstcliche]

[gailsimone]

I get asked for writing tips all the time, here are some quick tweets that some may find helpful. :)

[zuzartii]

Some Photoshop Tips

I’ve been getting quite a few asks about the process for the patterns in my stylized artworks, so I decided to put together a couple of tips regarding them. 

Firstly, what you need are

—  CUSTOM BRUSHES  —

Most of the patterns I use are custom brushes I made, such as those:

For the longest time I was convinced making brushes must be super extra complicated. I was super extra wrong. All you need to start is a transparent canvas (2500px x 2500px max):

This will be your brush tip. When you’re satisfied how it looks, click Ctrl+A to select the whole canvas and go to ‘define brush preset’ under the edit menu

You will be asked to name your new glorious creation. Choose something that describes it well, so you can easily find it between all the ‘asfsfgdgd’ brushes you’ve created to be only used once

This is it. Look at it, you have just created a photoshop brush. First time i did I felt like I was cheated my whole life. IT’S SO EASY WHY HASN’T ANYONE TOLD ME 

Time to edit the Good Boi to be more random, so it can be used as a Cool Fancy Pattern. Go into brush settings and change whatever you’d like. Here’s a list of what I do for patterns:

- under Shape Dynamics, I increase Size Jitter and Angle jitter by 5%-15% 

- under Brush Tip Shape, I increase spacing by a shitload. Sometimes it’s like 150%, the point is to get the initial brush tip we painted to be visible.

- If I want it to look random and noisy, I enable the Dual Brush option, which acts like another brush was put on top of the one we’ve created. You can adjust all of the Dual Brush options (Size, Spacing, Scatter, Count) as you wish to get a very nice random brush to smear on your  backgrounds

The result is as above. You can follow the same steps to create whatever brush you need: evenly spaced dots that look like you painted them by hand, geometric pattern to fill the background, a line of perfectly drawn XDs and so on. 

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE

—  PATHS  —

But what if you want to get lots of circles made of tiny dots? Or you need rows of triangles for your cool background? Photoshop can do all of that for you, thanks to the magic of paths.

Typically, paths window can be found right next to Layers:

Draw whatever path you want, the Shape Tool has quite a bit of options. Remember, paths are completely different from brush strokes and they won’t show up in the navigator. To move a path around, click A to enable path selection tool. You can use Ctrl+T to transform it, and if you move a path while pressing Alt it will be duplicated.

Now, pick a brush you wish really was in place of that path you’ve drawn and go to layers, then choose the layer you want it to be drawn on. Then, click this tiny circle under the Paths window:

Then witness the magic of photoshop doing the drawing for you while you wonder how tf have you managed to forget about this option for the past 2 years 

You can combine special brushes and paths for all sorts of cool effects. I mostly use them in backgrounds for my cards, but you can do whatever you want with them.

I hope that answers the questions for all of the people who were sending me inquires about the patterns. If you have any questions regarding this or any other Photoshop matter feel free to message me, I’m always up for complaining about how great and terrible Photoshop is C’:

[conmieser]

Can you help me out with drawing feet from different perspectives? I cant even with feet, thank you!

oh dang feet are one of my weaker points so this will be brief. 

first i start out with the main shape of the foot (simplify it into a wedge or triangle just to maintain proportions) note: toes are weird

and then start filling in the finer details. At this point, its up to the drawing gods to decide your fate idk just a;sldkfjAKDLFJS

*sweats* and there ya go

[mrhaliboot]

Hello, just want to say I love your art, do you have any suggestions on how to draw poses?

I guess three things I think of when it comes to poses are line of action, straight vs curved, and weight. I’ll use this quick awkward doodle to demonstrate:

You probably know this one if you know animation. Everything in the drawing doesn’t necessarily have to stick to it, but its a good basis for the overall silhouette. Most examples I’ve seen stick to one line, but sometimes I experiment with two if I’m going for a more action-y, dynamic pose. Its best not to go over two (two is risking it) as that would just get too visually confusing.

This one is more for smaller details, such as the arms and legs. Its good if you want to go for a more stylized look, since real life humans never have completely straight lines anywhere on their body. It’s basically contrasting a straight line with a curved one so you get a clearer idea of where the volume is going. Check out this video if you want more info, which is where I referenced from!

An easy one to forget in my experience. A little trick we learnt in life drawing class is that in real life the nose should generally be parallel to where the most weight is, to make it look more balanced. You’ll notice too that the body gets more compressed where the most weight is, ie the left leg here.

Some of my own (colour coded) examples, although I’m still learning to apply these things ~

(Sometimes if the nose doesn’t line up with where the body is leaning, you have to balance it out with the limbs or other body parts. The amethyst one would not work if she wasn’t holding another character on her back)

I recommend looking up these techniques online or in art books as you’re bound to find more in-depth tutorials and examples. But overall I hope this helps!

[swiftspillsartblog]

This is a little comic I made for comic class, we were doing mini comics so this thing turned out as a small 3 inch tall folded comic but I worked pretty hard on it and wanted to share it. The scanner I had really did a number on int however, its a bit fuzzy at the bottom and the lines are all messed up for some reason. Anyways it’s just a dumb little story I did about a dnd character I had and her little sidekick. Enjoy~

[etheringtonbrothers]

For those of you that like everything neatly organised, here’s links to EVERY ONE of my first 150 how to THINK when you draw TUTORIALS, in ALPHABETICAL ORDER for #SkillUpSunday! Enjoy, link, pin, share! Cheers! Lorenzo! How to draw ANGRY EXPRESSIONS How to draw BIRD HEADS How to draw BOOKS How to draw BOXES How to draw BREAKING GLASS How to draw BRICKWORK How to draw CABLES and WIRES How to draw CAR CHASES How to draw CATERPILLAR TRACKS How to draw CAVES How to draw CHARACTERS (3-SHAPES) How to draw CHARACTERS (FLIPPED-SHAPES) How to draw CHARACTER SHAPES How to draw COMIC COVERS How to draw COMPOSITION How to draw CROSS-CONTOURS How to draw EARS How to draw FABRIC How to draw FEET & SHOES How to draw FEMALE HANDS PART ONE How to draw FEMALE HANDS PART TWO How to draw FOREGROUND MIDGROUND BACKGROUND How to draw GAME BUILDINGS How to draw GEMS and CRYSTALS How to draw GIRL’S HAIR How to draw GRASS How to draw HAIR (1940s styles) How to draw HAPPY EXPRESSIONS How to draw HORNS How to draw HORSE HEADS How to draw IMPACT DEBRIS How to draw IN 3D How to draw INTEGRATING LOGOS How to draw INTERIOR BASICS How to draw IN-WORLD TYPOGRAPHY How to draw JUNGLE PLANT CLUSTERS How to draw JUNK HOUSES How to draw LAMP POSTS How to draw LAVA How to draw LIGHTNING and ELECTRICITY How to draw MECHANICAL DETAILS How to draw MUSHROOMS and FUNGUS How to draw MONSTER HEADS How to draw MONSTER TENTACLES How to draw MOUNTAINS How to draw NEGATIVE SPACE How to draw NEWSPAPERS How to draw NOSES How to draw PERSPECTIVE BOXES How to draw PIGS How to draw POD HOUSES How to draw POURING LIQUID How to draw ROBOT ARMS How to draw ROCK FORMATIONS How to draw RUNNING FIGURES How to draw SAUSAGE DOGS How to draw SEA WEED   How to draw SHADOW COMPOSITION How to draw SHOULDER ARMOUR How to draw SIEGE WEAPONS How to draw SILHOUETTE THUMBNAILS How to draw SMOKE EFFECTS How to draw SNOW How to draw SPACE BIKES How to draw SQUIRRELS How to draw STICK FIGURES How to draw THE HORIZON How to draw TIKI STATUES How to draw TREASURE CHESTS How to draw TREE BARK How to draw TREE ROOTS How to draw VEHICLES How to draw VINTAGE PLANES How to draw WATER How to draw WOODEN HOUSES

[suthnmeh]

glory!!

[gentle-reminder]

gentle reminder

‪your creations inspire and bring joy, even if for now it is just to yourself, so please try your best to never stop creating, and to not be discouraged ‬

[motivation-and-fitness]