Who do I have to sell my soul to for you to make a sexy bloody Gambit?
I can't promise anything, dear Anon, but I'll try after I'm done with something else. The spirit is willing, but the mental state remains poor this past year. ♥
Nostalgia season! Been casually rewatching Yu Yu Hakusho, and apart from a few iffy moments, I’ve been remembering what made this series so special to me. So, here’s a bit of Kurama.
I felt encouraged by @kingdomfantasy6 here on Tumblr to give Krita a more serious go, and this was the outcome, made with 2 of Krita’s default inking brushes and a lot of Googling on how to do so-and-so functions. I’ll write about it separately, I’ll just say for now that while Krita feels a bit slow and has a bunch of headscratchers regarding missing QOLs and default commands, it has a pretty robust flatting tool that I liked using more than even CSP’s.
The brush set is free for patrons on Patreon, and $1/PWYW on Gumroad. I made most of these to create very specific effects or marks in my own work, so quite a number of these are going to feel very niche in their use.
I used GifCam to create the gifs in this post, but it seems to have interpreted the canvas as gray and has cursor ghosting(?), so apologies for that.
General brush notes:
brushes were made to work with a 350dpi canvas, and all the GIFs here were recorded at "print size" (47.6% zoom on my Cintiq 13hd screen)
"Painting" brushes are for Color Layers, "Ink" brushes were made to be used with Monochrome Layers (nothing's stopping you from using these in other ways, though)
I have a light hand, and the pressure curve of an old Cintiq 13hd may not translate well to other tablets. If you find that the pressure sensitive areas of the brushes aren't working to your liking, feel free to adjust their pressure settings in the Sub Tool Detail palette. Most of the time, the ones of note will be:
For brush size:
For paint flow:
Painting
General, Round Soft, and Soft Opaque are standard painting brushes. General lays down new paint opaquely, but has a bit of blending when you layer paint on top of existing ones. I reach for this brush the most when I'm in the early stages (head doodle below was made purely with General). Soft Opaque has no blending. Round Soft has the most blending among the three. Pencil or pen is meant for rough linework for either color or monochrome layers.
Light Buildup was made for glazes. It can also build up to solid opacity depending on pressure and repeated strokes.
Smeary Abstraction and Textured Edge are abstraction brushes, though the latter can be used in normal painting for added textured strokes.
Just Blending is your garden variety blending brush, but its blend values are fixed, soft, and has minimum characteristics. Just for those rare moments when I really need spot areas to be soft. (A better textured blending brush already comes in CSP, the Wet Bleed Blender's pretty great and responds to pen pressure)
Ink
Rough Liner, Drying Up, Rough and Thin, Liner on Rough Paper, Dry Brush - Disjointed, and Dry Brush - Loaded are different flavors of inking brushes. Among these, I use Rough Liner the most, followed by Disjointed if I want to play with something more messy, then Loaded if I want something defined but a bit more interesting than Rough Liner.
Loaded has both rough and dry-brush like characteristics to its strokes. It can also be used as a general texture brush and can be blown up to a large size.
Distress, Large, Medium, and Small are all dry brush texture brushes with blunt starts/ends. The names of the last 3 may be a bit misleading, so just to clarify all three of these brushes have unique brush tips. They were just made to be used at different scales, but can be safely blown up to larger brushes if needed (to a point).
Sponge and Messy Hatch (+ its 2 variants) are general texture brushes.
Shading Fine, Shading Thick, and Shading Tapered are meant to make hatch shading easier. The brushes follow direction, so running the brush one way will lay down the texture, then turning the brush into an eraser and running the brush the opposite way will thin down the shading.
Use these in conjunction with deformation tools and then erase + refine the results. Practical example (not a GIF):
At one point, I needed something very specific, and Spot Abstraction was born. It's for creating some background abstract elements that look a bit more organic.
Edge Carver, Speckled Carver, and Trail Carver were all made to try and "shape" strokes to look a certain way. Edge Carver's pretty useless for anything else, and mostly exists to make for interesting textures. Speckled can be used as a texture brush on its own, while Trail Carver is for shaping off ink trails. I've been using them to make certain strokes look less abrupt/unnatural.
If you got this far and you're still interested in the brush pack, it's available as a $1/PWYW purchase on Gumroad:
https://mochatrope.gumroad.com/l/QyuXI
It's also free for patrons on Patreon.
Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoy making artwork with these.
We got the go-ahead to show our Black & Gold zine contributions, and here's mine. It's a one-page Gladnis minicomic set in Verse 2. Had a lot of fun conceptualizing this, but this was a challenge to render!
Got my contributor copy of the zine a while back, and I'm bowled over with the sheer size and quality of this book. I posted about it on Twitter (linked as a reply to this post), but here it is unwrapped:
Digital version of the zine is still up on both US and Int’l shops, but there are still B, C, and D physical copies left on the international store, if you're looking to snag one for yourself. All proceeds of this zine go to Sands, a neonatal death and stillbirth charity in the UK. Head over to @gladnisblackandgoldzine here on Tumblr for details.
I'll also be talking about this piece soon on Patreon once we get the thumbs up from the mods post-sales, including the ups and downs of the painting process.
For those of you who've bought this zine, thank you! Hope you're enjoying all of the amazing contributions from my fellow artists and writers, and the amazing love and work the mods poured into it.
Thanks especially to SilentScreamArt for hosting it. This is one of the most beautiful things I've ever been blessed to be a part of.
Black & Gold: An Older Gladnis Final Fantasy XV Fanzine is now open for pre-orders
Black & Gold Fanzine pre-orders are open!
Very happy to report here that I've recently finished my art submission for this charity zine. There are 35 (!) contributors, and the lowest tier for the physical copy is £20, and the highest with all the fantastic merch and add-ons is £50. Lower than I was expecting, considering this has turned out to be a pretty meaty zine. Can't wait to enjoy all the lovely fics and take in all the amazing illustrations and merch.
The zine itself is mindfully arranged so that one half of the book has Verse I-compliant fanwork, and if you flip the book over, that other half has a different cover and contains Verse II-compliant fanwork. Inside, the contributions meet towards a gorgeous center art spread by LoBennettDraws, showing a depiction of Gladio/Ignis in the game's Verse I and Verse II endings.
Just look at these mind-blowing covers from the awesome Recipeh for Success:
The zine's proceeds will go to Sands, a charity for stillbirth and neonatal death in the UK. You can read more about Sands here.
I'll post a preview of my art submission in a few weeks when it's allowed.
There's also a promo where pre-orders on Gladio's birthday (April 2) for tiers Rosé Gold, Old Golden and Onyx will include a special party sticker designed by XHidaka.
Super grateful to the amazing host and mod team that put together this zine and ensured a smooth experience for us contributors:
SilentScream
XHidaka
Data_HEX
SimpleLoon
Relevant links:
The Black & Gold Fanzine Shop Front - Pre-order Here!
I’ve left a public post on my Patreon regarding my 2nd foray into an October art challenge, for those who might be interested.
If you like my art, please consider supporting me on my $1/PWYW Patreon. Thanks for all the comments/likes/reblogs on my work, and any silent onlookers that may be out there. Really appreciate the support.
Ignis woke up feeling cute today, might wear a designer dress to Council, nbd.
Ink sketch for the Igtober prompt “Fashion”
Based on a tweet from Raptor_Redeem (which seems to have been deleted now? I can’t seem to find it again), but it was about Ignis attending an Insomnia Council meeting with a rather stunning dress. I’ve linked to it over on Twitter.
titsay
blakekathryn
jbbartram-illu
snowghoul
yousharknotpass
annaxmalina
germansingergirl
romaincrisis
2087
stormborns