Nat the Illustrator's Art and Writing Blog

Fanart, WIPs, sketches and doodles!

[drawingden]

How to Draw WOODEN BUILDINGS CABINS SHACK tutorial by STUDIOBLINKTWICE

[dekuhornet]

Hi! May I ask how do you make those little animations in your drawings? (Like in the KS one) Thanks! I love your art very much! :D <33

thank you so much!! i made a tutorial for this a year or so ago but i have no idea where it went, so i’m just gonna make a new one here lol ^_^

1. make sure you know which parts you want to animate, because you want to keep those parts on separate layers from the rest of the drawing. make each frame of your animation on a different layer and put all of them in order in a folder. the parts that i’m animating are the blood (which has all the frames under “set 3,” outlined in pink on the left) and the pupils of their eyes (which is on layer 69 outlined in blue, directly under the “set 3″ folder).

each frame should be slightly different from the one before. what i do is draw my first layer, make a second layer right above it, and trace over the first layer on the second layer with slight adjustments. then i make third layer and trace over the second with adjustments, and so on.

2. make the layers you want in the first frame visible (layers 47 and 69 for me), and then save the image as a png file (make sure to give it a numerical value, like ks-1.png, so that you keep all your layers in order)

3. after saving, keep your sai file open and make the layer for your second frame visible (layer 50 for me, and i hid layer 69 so that the pupils will move on every frame). save the second frame as a png file (like ks-2.png)

4. then make the layer for the third frame visible (layers 53 and 69), and save as a png. keep going until you have all your frames saved as a png and labeled in order.

5. unfortunately u can’t save animated gifs in sai so after everything’s done in sai, i move over to photoshop (i have elements 15, but the instructions should be the same for all versions of elements and similar for other types of photoshop). open all of your png layers in photoshop (i have 5), and create a new blank file to make your gif with.

6. copy and paste each one of the png images in order onto the blank file, each on a separate layer. it’s really important that the layers are in order so that it animates correctly.  it animates in order from bottom to top, so make sure your first frame is on the bottom layer and last is on the top.

7. go to file > save for web

8. this box should pop up. i don’t think you’ll need to worry about anything other than the parts outlined in pink, but you can always play around with the settings to see what they do/get things how you want!

first thing is you want to do is make sure the top box is set to “GIF.” then check the “Animate” box. under the animation section, looping options should be set to “Forever,” and the frame delay value can be whatever you want. i had mine set somewhere between .08 and .1 for this particular drawing (i don’t remember exactly what), but what you set yours at depends on you! the smaller a frame delay value is, the faster the gif will play.

9. then click “preview” to see your gif animated before saving it. if you need to change the frame delay then you can go back and do that before saving, but if you like how it looks then go ahead and save!

then you’re done!! as u can see this ^ is multiple frames, but the instructions are the same for doing two-framed gifs too (and it’s simpler bc less frames lol)

anyway i hope this was helpful!! feel free to ask if you have any questions i can be really confusing haha.

[shingworks]

Ready to set up your brand? get more tips and exercises in the 12-pg Branding Supplement Worksheet!

You’ve probably heard folks talk about their “brand”… what the heck is that exactly? and why should you have one?

In this tutorial we’ll talk about how anyone can easily develop a visual brand for their comic, crowdfunding project (or even for themselves!), to ensure a cohesive and easily recognizable product. We’ll also cover some easy ways we can promote our brand with simple and effective self-advertising. Once you see effective branding in the wild you’ll have a hard time unseeing it, which is a powerful tool you can use to promote your own works too~

In the worksheet we’ll go a step further and walk through the basic anatomy of a visual brand, look at case studies of works with very strong brands, and I’ll share more practical visual and analytics-based tips to make your advertisements really stand out.

As usual, all of this info is rendered down from years of me playing around with stuff and learning what works for me (and hopefully for you too)! You can see the work I put into branding my own comics at The Meek and Mare Internum.

My recent tutorials on Tumblr:

coloring with masks

writing for webcomics

researching for comics

acting for comics

All of my tutorials are released in lower-res format to the public 6 months after publication at the Shingworks Patreon. You can access the full tutorial archive, as well as nearly 1.5 years worth of bonus content, by becoming a Patron :] The next tutorial will up in a day or so, and will be about proportion.

And again, thanks very much for not removing my text <3

[kiera--b]

friday night tutorial time

this post is massive but i tried to cover both the conceptual and technical side, hopefully it’s somewhat coherent

continued under cut

Keep reading

[seirxi]

i actually really love drawing hands and only recently have I enjoyed it haha

I’m still not very good at it nor do I understand a single thing about anatomy but here’s some small tips I hope help!!!

tbh ive been waiting for someone to ask for a hand tutorial

[writerlyn]

Creating Complex Characters Worksheet

[shingworks]

Get some extra classes with the 11-page Clean up your Acting supplement~

This tutorial is about acting for comics! It’s not a subject people talk about a lot, at least compared to art and writing, but I’d argue that great character acting is one of the reasons we fall in love with fictional characters… and horrible character acting is why we stop believing in the characters, the story, and possibly the creator?? Fortunately, learning to spot bad acting is an easy way to correct it in your own work.

I was maybe a little snarkier in this tut than I needed to, but we’re friends here, I don’t need to pretend with you that I love every work equally. What I really do love tho, is when people learn to turn their criticism into corrections, which is the whole point of making and sharing these tuts! I hope you enjoy it :] You can also check out a bunch of human, monster, and alien crab acting in my own comics The Meek and Mare Internum.

My recent tutorials on Tumblr:

coloring with masks

writing for webcomics

researching for comics

All of my tutorials are released in lower-res format to the public 6 months after publication at the Shingworks Patreon. You can access the full tutorial archive, as well as nearly 1.5 years worth of bonus content, by becoming a Patron :] The recent tutorial is about Worldbuilding, so feel free to stop by~

and! thanks a ton in advance for not removing my text <3

[lepas]

This is great!!

One of the big tells for me that a cartoonist is a novice is when they rely too heavily on manga/anime exaggerated expressions - we see this A LOT with first-time webcomics. Even if you love manga and want to create works with that visual language, notice how those exaggerated expressions are most effectively used to enhance a moment. They aren’t there to handle the bulk of the acting or to carry a scene. If you use them constantly for every expression, it becomes visually exhausting (and reads disingenuous), and also you have nowhere left to go if you want to use a goofy expression as a visual punch.

Anywho, I back Der-shing on patreon and she always has good and insightful tips from a valid perspective with lots of experience!

(Eventually I want to back all the women in webcomics on patreon, but… that is a story for another day.) 

[all-the-writing-deactivated2017]

Credit

[miyuliart]

Beauty comes from within. See sketch here.

[thundercluck-blog]

Hey friends!

It’s Meg here for TUTOR TUESDAY! Today is part one of drawing trees. I’ll do a tutorial on painting trees next time! This was a recommended tutorial, and if you have any tutorials you’d like to see just send em in here or at my personal! Have fun, keep practicing, and I’ll see you next week!

[grizandnorm]

All new Tuesday Tips this year! Today, why I call the Almost Profile. Gives a slight more sense of volume. Useful in a lot of situation. Try it out! -Norm #tuesdaytips #almostprofile #100tuesdaytips2 #grizandnorm #grizandnormtuesdaytips #happynewyears2017

[taffybuns]

im rly not sure how 2 explain this

[drawingden]

Detangling DPI by Raeistic

[busket]

how to draw sharp teeth and have them make sense: a tutorial

so you want to draw a character with sharp teeth? that’s cool! you have a lot of options. like most things, how you draw fearsome teeth can be improved by looking at nature and i’m gonna show you how.

Read More

10 Helpful Notes On Character Design

So many people have asked me for character design tips over the past couple of years. Here’s a whole list of rules I keep in mind with my own character designs.

In no specific order:

Simple is good. Streamline your design to its essence. The more shit you add on your character the more you make it about what they are wearing, and not who they are.

Popular ideas of beauty are limiting. There are only so many ways to make a character conventionally beautiful before you start noticing they all have the same face (i.e. “Six Faces Syndrome”). What most people consider “ugly” or undesirable is actually features that make your character unqiue. Who would you likely remember more: A perfect-faced model or that model’s twin with buckteeth?

Understand typical archetype designs and visual stereotypes to use them effectively. What are characteristics found in a “hero” character? In a “villain” character? In a “child” character? What can you do to mix them around, or play it straight?

Don’t draw the lines of the character, rather: draw the character in the lines. In other words: if someone told you to draw a horse, don’t just draw a plain old horse—draw the personality in the horse. A Royal Noble Horse has a much different character from an Old Sickly Stubborn Horse, for example. There’s a difference between Hark! A Vagrant!’s Fat Pony and Tangled’s Maximus, for another example.

Make your characters relatable. Making a character as wildly unique as possible (a pink-purple-blue haired goth wearing nothing but Hot Topic gear, for instance) actually is one of the most alienating thing you can do for your audience. It’s trying too hard to make your character a special snowflake. Limit this extreme to very specific characters and roles, be calculating and precise about going crazy. It will be more effective.

In addition, find what makes a person special through the boring features. Not everyone has crazy tri-colored hair, but there are a lot of people who have short brown hair. Can you draw five different characters with short brown hair and make them all unique? Try it out.

Silhouettes are important. Are you varying body mass? Are you utilizing basic shapes? We are able to recognize people and objects just from their shadow, and we do it so often we don’t even notice we do it! If all your characters have the same “shadow,” challenge yourself to mix it up more.

If you drew your characters naked and bald, could you tell them apart?

Be consistent in the ‘tone’ of your design style.

All these rules can be broken according to how calculated your irony is for your story. But you need to know what to do right before intentionally doing it wrong.

[wannabeanimator]

Lighting your Painting: 4 Ways to Solve the Lighting Problem

Fundamentals of Painting

“Most of the time when we are painting, we get so overwhelmed with all the info, which is why practicing the lighting fundamentals beforehand will be beneficial for future work. This will be a pretty lengthy article, but it is pretty comprehensive in terms of necessary fundamentals. 

Fundamental #1: Importance of the Plane

When painting and using light, you need to switch from the form build-up approach to thinking about the right plane structure to make the right lighting decisions.

If you can simplify the elements into the proper planes you will understand the structure better and you will be able to assign the right values (when lighting).

Fundamental #2: Light Properties

There are  some consideration to make when thinking about lighting. I will try my best to explain some of properties and explain how the lights affect the values and colors of a scene.

Light-Shadow Ratio: The light-shadow ratio determines how much of a contrast there is between light and shadow. A higher contrast is created due to sunlight, and a lower contrast due to overcast weather for example. This is caused by different intensities in light.

Value Keys: Value keying is mainly a design technique used to adjust the value scale while maintaining the light-shadow ratio. Depending on the light situation we have a specific value key in the scene.

Value Compression: Value compression is needed, because we as painters can´t get the full range of light into our paintings. We need to decide, if we want to expose for the light side or shadow side and sacrifice the values on the other side

Light Color: The first thing to understand about light is that it constantly changes it´s wavelengths, therefore changing it´s color. To simplify the process just identify the light as a warm or cold light.

Shading Components

Fundamental #3: Light Set-up

Now that we know how values and colors and affected by light, let´s look at how to set up lighting situations. These lighting situations are always used, and can be divided into natural and artificial light:

Light Types: There are only 3 basic light types you need to know to light your scene. Key Light, Fill Light and Rim Light.

Light Sources: There are only so many light sources that exist. Knowing about them will help you identifying them in any given reference and use them creatively.

Global Illumination: The characteristics of global illumination is the use of bounced/reflected light. It is used to calculate where reflected light is coming from, so we know which planes receive what light in any given scene. You need to treat it as a diffuse light source. It is most effective when there are a lot of shadows.

Fundamental #4: Material Behaviour

Many Material renders disregard the properties of Light. The reason we have learned about light in the first place is to convey materials in different lighting conditions and make them congruent to the scene. Let´s look at the materials and how light interacts with different surfaces.

Learn how to think about shapes, value, color and edges and understand it to apply the knowledge of physics to adjust your values and colors. A proper artist knows both the mechanics of painting and of physics.”

For full explanations complete with image examples, go to the article.

[elvi-loci]

How to do “extra” facial expressions!

Drawing basic facial expressions is not the hardest. Most people can draw a sad face, a happy face, angry etc., but making more multidimensional expressions is more of a challenge. I have gotten a lot of compliments on how I draw facial expressions, (specifically “angsty ones”) telling me that they are very dramatic and well… expressive! And there are actually only a few things I think about when I draw faces that take them to the next level, so I thought i’d illustrate them all here!

SUPER IMPORTANT TIP BEFORE WE START: Look at your own face when you draw faces. Even making the face when you are drawing (you don’t even have to look at it), will give you some sense of how the face muscles pull and where things fold and stretch, because you can feel it. You are the best reference when it comes to facial expressions!

Angles 

Draw the head in an angle that matches the expressions you want to make. It is not a requirement, but is going to add to the effect.

Symmetry vs asymmetry 

A face is rarely symmetric. Unless the face the character is making is 100 % relaxed or even dissociating, the eyebrows, mouth and facial muscles will have different placements of their respective side. This image shows the dramatic impact asymmetry has on a face: 

That’s the difference between a smile and a smirk!

The first one’s like “oh yeah?” and the second is like “oH YEAH??”

The “balloon squishing principle”

This is something I did subconsciously, and I didn’t know about until I made this tutorial. And this principle goes hand in hand with an asymmetric face. Basically, if you squish one part of the face, you need to even out the empty space by “inflating” the other part of the face so that it doesn’t appear shrunken. The picture hopefully explains it:

Teeth 

Don’t forget to add the gum when the mouth is open to its full potential!

Squinting and folding

Adding folds around the eyes when a character is squinting makes a HUGE difference. It makes a smile more genuine and a growl more intimidating. Adding folds to the face in general makes your characters more lifelike and ‘visually relatable’. Like, they look human, and less plastic or fake.

and so on..

Pupils and irises 

The placement of the iris and pupil in relation to the eyelids is very important! The less of the white you see, the more relaxed the character is. 

And then of course eyebrows and eyes go hand in hand!

Gestures, spitting, sweating… 

Adding more elements than just a face is key to making the character actually look like they are feeling what you want them to feel. Just the tiniest sweat drop adds to their anxiety, spitting adds frustration to their rage, slouching shoulders, waving hands, a double chin, extreme angles, the list goes on! Add whatever and see what kind of impact it makes! Does it do the trick? Great! Add it! 

Over exaggeration!! 

Remember that you can almost always exaggerate more. Don’t be afraid to do draw “too much” because you’re just experimenting. See what works and what doesn’t. What do you like to exaggerate?

Now that you know some theory, it’s time to practice!

Practicing!! 

The 25 Essential Expressions (a classic! I’ve done it multiple times)

And the one I do when I’m bored:

Fill a page with circles and fill them in with different expressions. Try and exaggerate as much as you can! 

This is mostly for experimenting. They are quicker to draw than complete faces, but the same rules should apply!

And that’s about it!

I don’t know if I covered everything in this tutorial, since some things might be obvious for me, and this post perhaps only scratches the surface. So feel free to send me a message if you want an explanation about something more in depth! Thank you for reading! And now DRAW!!! ✨🎨