#I've been trying to go back to my traditional art style though | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

simplydnp · 1 month

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WAD: Cover Art

dan is still working on selling the distribution rights for We're All Doomed! so i decided to make some DVD/Blu-ray disc jacket art!

this is my attempt at a traditional jacket design! none of the images used are mine, but i did create the concept and design:

as i was making the first one for myself, i was struck by the fact that 'well, it's for me, so it doesn't have to look like a stereotypical jacket cover' which led me to be more artsy in my approach for the next one:

i was really enjoying the creativity and space to explore, so i went looking for more inspiration for a third design. this led me to dan's favourite Muse album: Origin of Symmetry, which i paid homage to:

after the first Muse album, i looked at their catalogue to see if there was more inspiration there. i was just thankful dan's favourite was easy stylistically to mimic, unlike say, 2009's The Resistance...

thank you @danielhowell for the inspiration!

nerdy stuff & reference pics below the cut!

General notes

i don't know how to use photoshop! i entirely brute-forced my way through the whole project, and the only tutorial i looked up was for the gradient text in the 4th cover

this wasn't even the original project i was working on! you'll eventually get to see that though

and this one also inspired art for the disc itself so stay tuned 👀

i will do anything for authenticity so these are Full of intentional details

matching fonts is a nightmare

the traditional cover

took the longest, as it was the first.

the barcode numbers are the date of the first video he uploaded on dinof, and the last tour show date (in m/d/y)

i changed 'iceland' to 'poland' on the front cover, as he never actually went to iceland, and poland wasn't ever on the list even though he did go there

the orange may look a little off-center in the front, but these designs need to include space for a spine between the front and back cover, i promise it's right 😂

the black and white cover

inspired by the 'i want to believe' aliens poster

the cover art comes from his metal band merch shirt design

i had to manually shrink the text, line by line, and ensure it all lined up on the back!

i even made the logos on the back greyscale

the Muse: Origin of Symmetry cover

a shockingly perfect style for a WAD cover. i'm so glad i used the cubes, even if they couldn't be orange.

there's some versions of the art online where the sky is even more orange and it baffles me how i haven't seen any parallels like this before

the Muse: The Resistance cover

this cover was never supposed to see the light of day! i meant it when i said i was grateful i didn't have to try to adapt this complex design... and yet, i tried anyway.

i did all the grid lines by hand, including the jagged/broken edge parts, shading each section, and then drawing every star.

the hardest part was getting the gradient on the back text to cooperate. photoshop's gradient settings are surprisingly limited

gotta shout out @amazingphil for being the reason i knew what this cover looked like--it's the only muse album i knew the art of before embarking on this quest!

obligatory sob story:

i've been extremely and suddenly ill for 6 months. it is difficult to function moment to moment, but especially in doing little things just for me. this is the first and only art project i've been able to feel inspired to not only work on, but to finish, and despite the pain and long hours, i enjoyed every minute of it. thank you, dan, for creating this space for me to explore, and thank you, everyone here, for being wonderful support during this time 💞

#it's finally here!! i hope you all love them as much as i do #dnp #c.text #dan and phil #daniel howell #phan art #hey phil look at this #we're all doomed #wad #c.art #word

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eregyrn-falls-art · 1 year

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Stan and Ford and the Cornstalk Men - an update!

The Cornstalk Men are a fall tradition that I've missed seeing in person for the past couple of years. I first did this sequence where Stan and Ford encounter these New Jersey... beings? cryptids? creatures?... back on Halloween of 2017. Decided on the spur of the moment to update them; 5 years is a long time in art evolution! Below is some of the original text and other links.

In October of 2017, I first posted about encountering these giant cornstalk men while driving on a minor highway through New Jersey farmland. Although I didn’t go into it at the time, I was driving on a really grey day with fog persisting through the morning, turning the surrounding fields and distant trees into ethereal vistas. Which made coming upon these faceless giants all the more eerie, despite it being a busy highway (and them basically being roadside advertising for a garden center.)

Some folks commented suggesting that these were propitious figures, forest spirits (or… spirits of the field, I guess?) or otherwordly sacrifices for a good harvest. Sure! Why not. As I said before, this seems like some major Over the Garden Wall shit happening right here.

(As noted in the original post, these things are gigantic. Those are novelty giant Adirondack chairs, They've got to be at least 10 feet tall, even sitting down.)

It seemed like just the kind of thing that Ford would insist they go investigate!

Though, he and Stan were never very familiar with the more farm-oriented parts of New Jersey. Stan is obviously dubious about the whole thing; including after the Cornstalk Men show up. As it turns out, they’re perfectly friendly, if a bit inscrutable, and happy to at least try to answer Ford’s questions before whatever fate awaits them on All Hallow’s Eve. (The original version was posted on Halloween.)

BONUS:

(Stan has already fucked off across the road to a farm stand where they are selling five different types of pie. He is less interested in witnessing eldritch harvest rituals, and more interested in making sure he keeps them both on schedule for the Skype call later to see what the niblings have dressed up as this year.)

I did eventually do a sequel, in GF style, in which they do bring Dipper and Mabel to meet the Cornstalk Men. (That was posted on Thanksgiving 2018, which is why I now associate these posts with Tgiving.) And here is the original version, from 2017.

Anyway -- hope everyone's day has been as good as it can be. I know the holidays can be stressful for a lot of people. I'm about to heat up some dinner, and begin my now-annual rewatch of Over the Garden Wall.

#gravity falls #stanford pines #stanley pines #sea grunks!#cornstalk men #thanksgiving #new jersey #my art

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pixelatedraindrops · 2 months

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Hello everyone!! Today I grow a year older :3 (and I hate it lmao) FEEL FREE TO REPLY BIRTHDAY WISHES IF YOU WANT :3

So, over the time I've come back here, I've become pretty confident and proud of my once hidden passion about sick characters, sickfics and sick comfort/whump... 🌡️

And you all have been so supportive and sweet despite my weirdness so I thank you for that. You helped me feel more confident in my otherwise weird fixation <3 So, for my birthday I thought I'd try and make up a little drawing challenge for anyone who wants to give it a try... There are soo many talented artists on this site (and in this fandom)

So... It's your turn to target your faves now. You will see how fun it is and hopefully understand why I love doing it so much. 😈🌡️

(plus it's my birthday and I require some sustenance LMAO JKJK)

But yeah anyone can join in. This is just for fun though! You don't have to if you don't want to! I think its okay to ask for some food on my birthday though...right?? X'D So if you wanna do sth for my birthday...then... 👉👈 💦

CHALLENGE BELOW~

DRAW YOUR FAVE ON A SICK DAY CHALLENGE🌡️😷🥵🤧

~~~~

(Mmmmkay, I am lying to myself when I say this isn't mostly aimed at the RainCode community... X'D Can't help myself. But anyone can join regardless of the fandom!!)

So here's the challenge and the rules!! (featuring my two main lil targets ofc :3)

Regardless of who it is, put your fave through some sickness hell >:3c I'd love to see it! Make em' as miserable as you want!

destroy them 😈 jkjk XD

If you're in the RainCode community you can target anyone, but as you know, my main targets are Yuma and Makoto. If they're also your faves and who you decide to use, that will make me extra happy!

Some tips for anyone new to drawing a sick day scenario art. A few things that make it look convincing are the following:

Pajamas or Loungewear

Messy Bed Hair

Fever flushed face w sweat or at least a red nose

Tired Eye bags

Shivery body

Ice Pack or a Compress on the head

Thermometer sticking from their mouth

LOTS OF BLANKETS

Tissues or medicine surrounding them

Tea or Soup (or both)

Those are just to name some from the top of my head. If you'd like some pointers on how to make a character look ill, check out my Fever Coloring Guide. This is for digital artists but traditional artists can try it too!

You can add injury or angst to the scene but I'd like illness to be the main focus of it.

The scene can be anything you want to, it can be fluffy and wholesome (with a caretaker) it can be angsty, or it can be silly. Its all up to you! Do it for the sake of fluff! Caretaking scenes are the best for any kind of relationship >w<

Either way, have fun with it!! I look forward to see what people make if they decide to give it a try! It doesn't even have to be a full on picture! Doodles and sketches are fine too! Just show me something >w<

(feel free to tag me and say happy b-day and mention my challenge, I am proud to be known for this and would love for many to participate :3) I wanna see you take a go at it :3 Show me your style! :D

~~~

(wow look at me misspelling the word writing on text when I did it fine with my own hands lol)

Now, I know not everyone can draw...

Well never fear! I accept writing as well! ✍️✍️✍️

(hi vivia lol sorry for giving you a cold, at least you have an excuse to read and do nothing now haha x3)

Sickfics are one of the biggest things I live for! Any little drabbles or full fics with more than one chapter are welcome! Again target who you want any fandom you want, but I'll def be super happy if you make a RainCode fic. And even happier if you target my faves as well, but again, anything will do! Just make a cute story about your fave being miserable and being tended to! Trust me, it's super fun!

You can add injury or angst to the scene but I'd like illness to be the main focus of it.

Feel free to post your writing here and tag me or mention my AO3!

If you need a start to your fic, look on my blog for illness prompts! Maybe it can help give you a good start or give some inspiration! (thats why I share 'em :3)

I look forward to anything you try to write!

That's about all!! I hope you decide to participate! ✨

Good luck, have fun, and godspeed you future whumpers! 😈

(nah jk XD)

AGAIN THIS IS FOR FUN! NO PRRSSURE IF YOU DON'T WANT TO!

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beast-feast · 5 months

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Hey idk if you've answered this but what is your art process and what do you use for traditional and digital art?

Honestly I don't even know but at the same time I know the processes are very similar. I'll try and do my best HSNFKAH

Digitally I like to just Do Whatever Feels Good so it's a very "trust the process" kind of thing. Mainly when I draw digitally though I'll start with this.

Basically just making rough shapes and then the details on different layers while changing the opacity.

In the case of traditional it's a LOT more casual and I really don't have a good explanation for it? Basically skipping the rough detail layer and instead going to a sort of rough sketchy look (which is what I've been doing traditionally mostly these days.)

Digital linework is where I correct my mistakes (most of the time, if it's something Not Serious like this it'll be a lot looser looking!) And most of the time that's actually kind of where it ends lol, most of the digital stuff you see from me nowadays is only finished stuff I put effort into.

But when I finish lineart I tend to delete the sketch layer entirely so I don't mistake it for something else, and then color under the lineart layer.

And in this case I decided to give you a rough idea of how I do my shadows+highlights? I don't do it All The Time but I put them on separate layers and play with the layer settings !!! Genuinely cannot advise this enough it's really nice and fun to just see what looks best. In this case though I used a basic multiply layer for the shadows and then on a layer above it placed a few highlights where a general light source would be coming from.

Something I highly suggest is doing what feels right to you in the moment. If you're itching for something that you haven't drawn before, look at photos of what you want and then try and memorize as much of the look as you can! It's a neat little exercise for stylization I've found out, but it's also super useful for when you need references too. Don't ever be afraid of them.

Going back to trad. art though. When I'm not working with very quick sketches with pen/pencil it can come in two ways: clean pencil drawing or something made with pen+marker.

I use mainly Sharpies for colored traditional pieces, and my secret is that if you're limited on colors, LAYER IT ON!!! One shade of a green can give you a decent shadow!!! I use Micron pens for lineart and a white gel pen to sneak in a few little highlights here and there. On paper I don't put much emphasis on light and instead focus on the shadow part (mainly because it's hard for me to figure out a good lighter color for things HAHSHSJAH)

But genuinely whatever you do I don't think having a "style" is perfectly fine. It's a fluid thing that's ever-changing for some and if you fall under that category it doesn't mean that you're not skilled! Play around, have fun, generally just see what looks cool and cooler :)

#ask/answer #I hope this makes sense #I'm not good at explaining things and unfortunately i can't record myself for like an hour explaining it while also drawing in real time 😭

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wolfsbane-and-nettles · 11 months

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He didn’t need to look to know Thorin was there, the feeling in his chest was enough to alert him to who it was. The internal debate of whether to stay or go was raging in his mind, but before he could make his own decision, the rumbling, low voice of the exiled King spoke.

“Master Baggins.” Thorin simply saying his name was enough to send chills of satisfaction across Bilbo’s skin. Bilbo refused to turn around, keeping his eyes the opposite direction of where Thorin was.

“Thorin.” Bilbo replied, nodding.

“What are you doing here?” Asked the king. The question was so silly that Bilbo couldn’t help but turn around to see if he was seriously asking.

“To take a,” and there Thorin was, clad only in a bathing towel, just as he had been, walking towards where Bilbo was. He swallowed hard and averted his gaze once more, trying not to burn holes into the dwarf. “Bath…what else would I be doing in here? What are you doing here?”

“Same as you.” Thorin said, though his voice seemed to carry an uncertain tone.

[Chosen Horizons, Chapter 10: The Comforts of Home]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bath scene from chapter 10, featuring dummy thick Bilbo and hairy ass Thorin.

It's been a hot second since I've done digital art, and my wacom is still a learning curve. I'm not sure how this style looks digitally in comparison to traditional, but oh well.

I, 9 times out of 10, will always skip doing any sort of back ground so it's not great, but I'm genuinely pleased with myself for the background (minimal as it is.)

I'm going to try to get back in the swing of drawing again, so hopefully I'll be adding more to the chapters soon.

All things considered, though it's not my best work, it definitely isn't my worst...hopefully I get used to my tablet sooner rather than later, but I'm the type of guy who gets upset when they don't understand something in the first five minutes....

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sezija · 20 days

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Hello! I recently saw your art of Ghali, Drephl and Rleiph, and decided to finally try out making wiki pages! I plan on making all three of them before adding them, but I have a few questions on about them. (Im pretty sure that you wrote the fic, but please correct me if I’m wrong)

first off, the fic is AMAZING, I cried multiple times while reading it, and everything goes together so perfectly there’s too much to talk about so I’ll stop here before it gets too long.

1) On Ghali, I wanted to double check that she took the last name Shims, because at some point it refers to the family as “the shims”

2) on Frihl, does he keep the last name Shims, or take his husband’s name?

3) can I say that Rleiph has pale speckles in her physical description?

4) could you give me more insight on Ghali’s , Drephl’s and Rleiph’s personalities? I personally struggle with describing those myself.

5) are there names for Drephl and Frihl’s parents, as I would like for them to be in the relationships category.

6) same for Rleiph’s girlfriend. Also, does she have a physical appearance? I’d love to draw the two of them together.

7) WEREWOLF CENTAUR. Amazing idea. What does the kid look like? I know that they’re described as a foal, but WHAT IS THEY JUST HAD A WOLF HALF INSTEAD OF A HORSE HALF, OR A WOLF HALF DURING FULL MOONS. I would love to know things like their skin tones and hair color too. (And coat) also thank you for all these centaurs, there isn’t even a catagory on the wiki for them yet.

8) what kind of clothes does everyone wear?

9) I know that Drephl and Ghali probably just went to a courtroom and signed some papers, but I really want to draw Drephl standing on a stool with her under an arch, where they just hug. This is also so I can mess around with possible wedding traditional clothing during that time period.

10) what is the name of Drephl and Ghali’s grandchild? The werewolf one?

Thank you for this amazing fic! Loved the art you made, and this will be very embarrassing if you didn’t write the fic!

Putting this under read more;;

Ok first of all. omg??? that's so cool what the hell!!! i'm so happy you liked my fic so much???

1) Yeah, she becomes a Shims

2) I think he takes his husband's name (which i don't have yet)

3) I forgot to give her some white in her coat in the art lol, but i decided to work that in; she's born with just a brown coat, but some white speckles start appearing as she grows older :3

4) They honestly don't have much, yet; the style i wrote in makes it really hard to add Character and Personality other than just stated facts like "she likes hiking" and "she's a computer programmer", sorry

5) Not yet, sorry

7/10) I want to give them at least 2-3 kids so i can actually make them all different, though i imagine they probably have 5-8 year age differences cus raising just one is chaotic and hard enough lol. someone made really good art of their kid!!! (i've come up w the names Phil, Lei, and Majil so far) (j pronounced like (consonant) y)

8) currently i've just been drawing them in some clothes from our time cus i haven't had the motivation&energy necessary to figure out the Fashion of their time, but i can say that the blanket??? dress?? things the centaurs wear is like. actual clothing they wear in their time period&place

9) I love that so much. also, it honestly makes a lot of sense for them to hold an actual celebration; your wedding is basically the only time in your life where you have an excuse to gather every single person you're close to in one place for a big party (aside from your funeral but uh. yeah.) their marriage was meant as the point where they no longer cared what anyone else thought bc they were so secure in their meaning to each other, so i love the idea of them going all out and then just hugging.

also behold! look what i found from way back when i was writing the fic :)

#sezijasks #this is. whattttttt i didnt know ppl cared abt my fic ???#i was like "oo ive got a new tablet maybe ill finally draw the Fam''#and then out of the floorboards oozed fanart and asks and reblogs of excitement and i was like !?!?!?!??!#its made me write some additional scenes to flesh out their personalities #idk if i'll release them yet they're just lil blurps but who knows #asks #i named zir 'nail' and it took me like 10 minutes to realize thats an actual english word lmao. its pronounced more.. finnish-like #put 'najiil' in finnish google translate and make it sound it out and uve got it #(the 'j' is less pronounced but if its not there it does it like english so)

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yay855 · 1 day

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I need you people to try this game- it's an open-source survival sci-fi traditional roguelike called Cataclysm Bright Nights. It's a fork based off of Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead, but designed to be more focused on fun than punishing realism- though it's still plenty realistic, at least given what kind of game it is.

For those who don't know, Cataclysm is an old game, from 2010, that has been developed over time and has since forked off into two competing versions. You play as the survivor of the Cataclysm, and now have to figure out how to keep surviving in the face of an ever-evolving threat.

Grab the game from the release section of the github; the game's full description (and my gushing) is below the cut.

You may be asking, "that description is kind of vague, what exactly was this apocalypse?", well the answer is all of them. Every single human is infected with a parasitic interdimensional organism known as The Blob, which mutates its host in response to certain things. Every living human, and many animals, that dies will come back as a zombie, and the longer the Cataclysm goes on, the more the zombies and wildlife will mutate further. There are also crazed humans who fight alongside the undead, bandits, alien invaders known as Mi-Go, demons rising from the netherrealms, hostile military robots and cyborgs and turrets dot the landscape, and there's even a fungal hive mind trying to infect all other life out of a twisted benevolence.

The game also has one of the most indepth crafting systems I've ever seen. Instead of simply being able to build with a workbench or your bare hands, most crafting recipes require the proper tools- and if you don't have them, you can make some. Pick some flowers to turn their stems into cordage, grab some rocks, and make a stone hammer and knife; build a basic screwdriver out of scrap metal and wood, and a makeshift crowbar out of a pipe you flattened on one end. Carve a wooden or bone needle and learn to sew a gambeson. Disassemble a lawnmower and tie the blade to a long stick to make a makeshift polearm. Construct a full forging setup and make yourself a sword and metal armor. Add an electric motor and a motorcycle battery to a bicycle to make it run that much faster. Take the turret mount off of a firetruck, weld it to the hood of the car you stole, and install a handmade laser rifle you built from disassembled electronics and camera lenses to run off of the car's battery, allowing you to gun down the undead hordes in relative safety. Disassemble .308 ammo to hand-load the spent 5.56 shells you used gunning down enemies. Delve into ruined laboratories whose experiments have run amok to find high-tech weapons and learn to craft your own targeted mutagens.

You can also learn martial arts, strengthening your abilities with melee weapons. Everyone learns basic brawling once they know how to hit something, but brawling takes higher skill to gain the basic techniques; proper fighting styles have to be carefully found, but are worth it. Use Eskrima and an extendable baton or a dagger to smack and dice your enemies apart, use fencing to effortlessly parry enemy attacks with a rapier, use ninjutsu to silently take down foes, learn drunken boxing to sway and counterattack every single enemy blow, or even learn biojutsu to slice your enemies apart with implanted metal claws or blades.

The game is also unique in that it lets you use mutations and cybernetics hand in hand. You mutating a pair of venomous fangs doesn't stop you from installing smoke and poison resistant cybernetic lungs, you mutating hooves doesn't stop you from installing high-tech alloy plating onto your legs. And you can loot cybernetics from hospitals and augmentation clinics and labs, but you can also dissect zombies for them, using your first aid skill to carefully extract bionics from the undead- you can even build a handheld device to identify bionics in corpses. Generally, mutations are less reliable but cost hunger at most, while cybernetics are more reliable but harder to power and gain.

All in all, it's one of the best roguelikes I've ever played. There's so much to it, there's daily updates, grab the Catapult launcher to try all four forks, just try it out! There's a discord server linked in the github!

#cataclysm #cataclysm bright nights #cbn #roguelike

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studioboner · 1 year

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Hi! I actually am wondering about trying watercolors for the first time but feel a little anxious haha.. how you go about drawing on the paper with confidence? Like, watercolor paper isn’t exactly cheap. I think I got the cheapest one avaible from Canson but still the anxiety is real… do you pick very light pencils like 2B so you can sketch veryyy lightly, or before sketching on the paper itself you do a planning sketch in another paper?

Im asking this cos I really love your art and it’s so cool that it’s mostly traditional! And the way you draw Tails is too adorable and consistent while being in your style, it always feels like you have confidence when you draw him.

oh i think this is gonna be a long one

all in all?i have the same anxiety as you. but i've confidense that i can make something good sometimes, but not that i will get it right every time. So i keep trying, but heres some stuff that helped

a warning though, i keep going on and on in this reply and can get pretty negative at times

my watercolor paper i use costs 2 dollars and has 20 sheets so that's 10 cents per sheet. which i feel helps with my anxiety... it's the canson multimedia block too, 140 msg .....

watercolor sketchbooks i'd find online were around 80 or more BRL, and then 20 BRL shipping.... that's 20 USD in total...

but a block of this plus getting it binded costs me 4 USD.....so i think that one [price] helps alot lol.....

as for the confidence.....

i've had enough time to do quite a bit of trad art, specifically ink and watercolors so im USED to the material and now quite as scared to "mess up" as when i first started it.... [hint, i still am] this is one example of a sketch page, they vary in size, and how "done" they are... i dont really worry too much about maintaining a rule of "everything in this sketchbook must be fully rendered " bc it ended up stunting my creativity

i did try the "sketch it onto a sketchbook and then pass it to watercolor paper" approach and tbh...? not really my thing... i've found that to me the first sketch always end up being looser than when i pass it on... i'm always more focused on getting the flow, composition and pose there than i am getting the right details or right lines or colors etc....

like this one, im more happy with the sketch, it's mroe dynamic, mroe fun

i DO sketch stuff on cheaper paper first when it's for trad art commissions though, just bc there i HAVE to make sure the client is getting what they asked

and i do use 2b pencils AND a "soft lead" mechanical pencil, btu tbh it's mroe bc of the feeling of it on paper than for the look of it...

here for example you can see the circle i used to have a basis on where tails would be.. i didnt erase it as i continued painting bc tbh it was just the sketch. i ended up liking it tho

i actually got quite MAD and angry at myself recently bc i noticed how much my sketches were looser in the sketchbooks when i did try the passing onto watercolors thing and i had a full on discussion with a fellow artist about daring myself to be bolder in the future, it has been working well

I sadly have to say though, that figuring out how to build confidense is more of a personal journey, and i cant claim that what worked for me [trusting my first sketch] would work for you.....

It's time, practice, trial and error....

OH, one thing though that DID help me. is:

-There's no art wasted, even if it doesnt turn out how you wanted it, you still learned something.

-Makins these personal art/fanarts isn't some school paper you have to hand it to be graded and then not get it back. You can re-do a piece as many times as you want until you get it right! I have quite a queue of pieces i plan on re-doing in the future bc i didnt like the first ones i did. im not perfect on confidence and i get scared of fully committing to drawings alot, many of them are pale not for choice bc bc i got scared of making my art too saturated and overworking it

i am about to get negative now so stop reading if you dont want to see that.

HERE NOW i's a alot of pieces i made that im unsatisfied with and plan on re-doing one day: too dull, simply way too watered

which led me to make THIS piece and do better colors

i hATE the way i did the lineart here. it's boring, the anatomies are wonky. it's a good concept but i didnt excecuted it as well as i wanted. but this piece has made me just go and try inking MORE so i could make up for it

which lead to this piece here eventually

This one here.... the colors look so muddy it just makes me SAD, bc i had been so scared to use high saturation that i went with the muddier colors by choice, if i had allowed myself to experiment i wonder how happier i'd be about it

which led me to make THIS piece with softer in value and more saturated colors

The colors and blending of this one are too soft and not bold enough for what i had envisioned it, i made it as fanart of a friends fic and it made me feel like i failed my friend and insulted her fic when i finished this. I dont think the piece looks bAD, mind you. i know it looks cute. and good even. But i had such high hopes for it.

which led me to make this one

THIS ONE OH MY GOD HOW I HATE IT. sonics expression is SO creepy hes like a horror movie weirdo , honestly not my best work when it comes to anatomy

so i've been doodlin sonic now and then as practice so that i could make this one eventually

The perspective on knuckles could be better and the characters look out of place on this scene, the background is ok

but in this piece here i was able to get a better harmony between colors, background and whatever sparse linework i threw in

Theres so many more haha but i'll stop for now....

Dont get me wrong i dont ACTUALLY think those pieces are HORRIBLE horrible,,,, i see the flaws in them yes, but theres always something i like too, and i know people like them, and that people wont throw away a whole piece over one small detail that in the end doesnt even affect the overall thing....

i've just been getting into the headspace of "ok. at least this one is done, onto the next"

plus the whole thing i told you of realising my first sketches are looser....

sorry im not too good at talking about this and my points arent very clear, i dont think this is going to be quite the help you expected it to be because the truth is that the struggle with your art is soemthign that doesnt go away no matter what skill you have...

at times to me it feels more like a mentality practice than skill, reasurring myself that it's ok to get it wrong and try again, etc etc....

i used to go to therapy and one of the things we talked about was my perfectionism, how i used to be so scared to mess up a piece. that i wouldnt even start, and wouldnt draw for months. this has been going for years now and hey i've gotten better.

but..... yeah im in the same boat as you.... except mine is no longer just about the paper quality!

Sorry this got so personal now, i hope that this hasnt killed your hopes on getting better at the anxiety. it does get way better haha... trying to force your brain to not judge yourself so harshly is half the battle in my opinion, the practice of drawing is the other half....

good luck i hope you have fun painting, i know i do, i love the process even when i dont like the result, good night and thank you for the question

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inkwell-and-dagger · 24 days

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I love your art style!! How did you gain it?

WAIT OMG 🥹🥹 THANK YOU SO MUCH ANON!!!!!!!!!

okay so! hmm

I've been doing mostly traditional art for a good portion of my life now, so to be honest I'm kind of new to digital art. back then I mostly just drew profiles and faces and wasn't good at anatomy (but to be honest I'm still bad at it- I use Poseit to help me ;D!!) and I hadn't really touched digital art until around. last year to the year before that I'd say? I'm not sure. my memory is horrible

as I said, I now use Poseit to help with structuring my art, and my previous art style just looked a bit. strange with it I'd say? lemme find the first digital art I posted

foster! this one was made using a posing template I found on pinterest, not Poseit. I wasn't all that good about making clothes look like clothes, so other than the little creases in the shirt their clothes look a bit strange. I'm really iffy about the eyes and the way I shaded them, and back then the way I drew scars is really different to how I do now. I'm all for the clean look it has at the end, but I prefer my new style ;3 also I remember I immediately went in with doing lineart instead of sketching out what I wanted to do first? on the plus side, though, as I said the finishing style is clean, the lines are consise and their expression is definitely foster-y, and I actually don't mind the shading!

as previously stated, that was my first try at digital art. now let's take a look at my most recent one, aka my pfp (actually, I'll use two recent ones)

Rayan (left) and Ruaridh (right)!!

let's start with the rayan one! as with foster's, I stuck to having clean lines, except I think I did vary the sizes of the lines? I'm not sure. I've only recently begun adding things like blood and blush to my art, so I don't think I've mastered it just yet. idk, does that count as rendering? I'm not sure

god, bloody noses. I love bloody noses. I had so much fun giving Rayan a bloody nose it's insane. also, you can tell that the lines on the scars are slimmer compared to the ones on foster, but I think they'd look better more like. idk, wiggly? uneven? scarry? I'm not exactly sure

and then Ru, omg Ru. this was my first try making a background, and I used stencils from ibis paint to do the trees n leaves n whatnot. this was more of a chance to experiment than anything; using a textured brush was a really nice change, and I got inspired by @/befuddled-calico-whump (sorry I'm a big lurker around their channel I really like their art) and the way they sometimes show the sketches beneath the actual lineart in their own pieces! it allowed me to be more messy and make it look more candid (?) in my style. I didn't really go for too much shading other than the lighting of the moon, since I still don't know what I'm doing with shading 😭😭

anyway! I guess the simple answer was a lot of years spent tweaking my style, and sort of just experimenting and having fun until I settle on something I'm comfortable with. I'm still new to certain aspects of drawing digitally, but I'm glad that people like my art :3

thank you for the ask!

#am i gonna show you my traditional sketches of foster when i was first figuring out my style? probably not 😭#those can be buried in my notebooks until im confident enough to show y'all lmao #whump ask #i hope i answered your question well anon! i tried my best #whump #whump asks

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gaymer-hag-stan · 1 year

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Fighting Games is a genre that I have always loved because they allow for unique player expression like no other genre. You get a wide selection of characters to choose from hailing from various different countries and practicing different styles of martial arts or even wielding melee weapons.

We've been lucky to have gotten tons of different games to choose from, and I have personally singled out the nine most vital franchises to the genre; the pillars of the fighting game community, if you will. Unfortunately, I only get ten options per poll, so games like Killer Instinct, Marvel vs. Capcom or Injustice have been left out. But that's why the tenth option has been left free of choice, as I'm sure that some of you will have the most obscure niche options in mind and will immediately comment "why is X not here" so there.

I'm also not deliberately ignoring Super Smash Bros., I just have traditional fighting games in mind and it's kinda not. But it's very much still a fighting game.

I'm also specifically talking about series of games and not one offs so that's why no Skullgirls and so on.

Anyway, at the end of the day vote for whatever you like, just don't bust my balls about "excluding" your fave 🤣

Really wish I could add:

A. More options

and

B. Images to the options to make them look prettier.

But overall I think polls have been a great addition. Good job @staff 👍😁👏

Here's a few general thoughts

I have a weird relationship with Mortal Kombat. My earliest memory of it must be some older kids next to my grandma's house playing MK4 and letting me watch them play for a while. Then I definitely remember the PS2 era games' covers and the video store, the dragon logo is so cool, but I never actually bothered to pick any of them. Until I got the 2011 game when I had a PS3. I liked it a lot, I kinda liked the story but I never understood the normies obsession with it? And here's a hot take; NRS stories are not that good, certainly not any better than any other fighting game like Tekken or SoulCalibur. The only key difference is that they have relatively good writing, while the rest of the major game, which are mostly Japanese, have cringey anime dialogue that absolutely does not fit the dramatic NRS storytelling everyone has been trying to copy post 2011. I wish they would straight up drop it and go back to having a decent, eight-level minimum arcade mode with character endings and stop trying to do what NRS does, because it's not that great to begin with. Anyway, I have since developed a love-hate relationship with it. I got both X and 11, and while both are objectively good games, with 11 FINALLY even making the characters look not ugly for the first time ever, but I think I've kind of moved on from MK. I don't have any attachment to the overall plot, I only mostly care about Mileena, Kitana and co., I mostly prefer 3D fighting games in general and I'm not that good at it so... Yeah. Still a fan series though, both the Reboot Trilogy as well as the, mostly underappreciated, PS2 trilogy.

I was born in 1997 and arcades weren't really a thing in Greece? I remember only having seen a Tekken 5 cabinet at a bowling alley in my entire life, so I never got to experience the "birth" of fighting games with Street Fighter, and Street Fighter itself was almost completely absent from the PS2, save for a few Alpha and SFII rereleases I think. So I finally got to play Street Fighter during the later years of it's fourth iteration when I got Ultra Street Fighter IV for the PS3. I was VERY frustrated at the beginning like, I was used to Tekken, DOA and SoulCalibur style gameplay, all of which are 3D but also combo-heavy games. Street Fighter was not that at all and I thought this made it a bad game. But I decided to give it a second chance with Street Fighter V. SFV is, perhaps notoriously, more simplified in both it's inputs as well as it's overall difficulty, so it helped me appreciate the series a lot more. Most of the characters no longer look ugly too (heavy emphasis on MOST) so that helped too. What's more, I can now actually play IV a lot better, and I even had money to spare to get Super Turbo II HD and Third Strike for the PS3, though I do struggle a bit with those too still, Third Strike in particular. Street Fighter X Tekken is also my guilty pleasure, don't @me. My only real issue is that I seem to be mostly interested in the "less regular" characters in the series like Elena or Poison or Laura which means that I have to find a new main in every single game and... I really don't care for most of the cast, especially the ones who seem to be featured on most of the games and never skip an entry.

I've been playing Tekken since I was 8 or 9 years old and got Tekken 5, the first fighting game I ever owned and I've been obsessed ever since. I love the gameplay because I feel like the four-limb system feels so natural, you know? If you press the X button you get a left kick, if you press the Δ button you get a right punch. It's so simple. Nina Williams is probably my favourite video game character ever, after Lara Croft, and I just really the series as a whole. It's also the only game I feel confident enough to play online atm.

For some reason I was always vaguely aware of The King of Fighters existence since around 2010-2011 but I never felt the desire to play it? Mai was added in Dead or Alive 5 however and I absolutely loved her. I played so much as her. But as far as picking up her own games... Well... KOFXIV looked like shit and I'd heard that XIII, and KOF in general, was very difficult so that was a bit off-putting. After falling out of love with MK however, I had to feel the gap. And along came KOFXV! I was still not completely sold, but I had money to spare and I got the game and I now love the series so much? Definitely my favourite 2D fighting game series. I wasted so many years gatekeeping myself out of playing the games but, honestly, while I sometimes buy things on impulse, the money I can spend on games is a very specific and limited amount so I always try to actually buy things that I will actually play and enjoy. XV is fun, but it turns out the "ugly" KOFXIV and the difficult XIII are even more fun! Shout-out to KOF for having an amazing cast of characters too. Even with Tekken which has been with me since childhood there are TONS of characters I straight up hate or just don't care about. KOF has over 90 characters and the ones I actually hate are probably fewer than Tekken's. This is certainly not a quantity over quality case (the yearly release for the first decade of the series was insane though, I don't know why they thought that was a good idea)

SoulCalibur is another series I loved since childhood but this one I didn't personally own until my late teens. A friend's uncle had a Dreamcast however, and when he would visit him in the summer he would bring it over and we would play SoulCalibur a lot! I have several reservations about Namco basing the series entire marketing on "who's the guest this time?" and later on the character creation. The sole focus should be on the characters themselves, because SoulCalibur has the most detailed and complex backstories in fighting games. Period. But because SoulCalibur has devolved into an overglorified character creator and the guests get the only media focus the game is gonna get during its promotional period, I feel like the brand itself has lost its mainstream appeal. SoulCalibur I is one of the best fighting games, and it has zero guests and no customization, other than being able to choose different weapons for each character. Have your guests by all means, I personally had tons of fun with Ezio and 2B, and Haohmaru even peaked my curiosity for Samurai Shodown, and customization can be fun too, but don't make it your main selling point. It has evidently not been working as well as Namco wants it to. Tekken and Mortal Kombat have guests and customization too, but they're not the games main selling point, they only help bring in additional fans.

Dead or Alive is the booby pervy game, sure, but it's also a great fighting game? The fast-paced gameplay is extremely fun and satisfying, most of the cast is actually pretty interesting, despite the sexy outfits and bikinis and beach volleyball, and whenever there's a new DOA in the market it it will always be the best-looking fighting game available at the time. There's no contest. I had tons of fun playing DOA2 as a kid and I had tons of fun playing DOA5 as an adult, because since DOA became Xbox-exclusive for a while, I never actually owned DOA3 or DOA4. I wish I could have had more fun with DOA6 too but the game is just... Soulless, and that's a shame. The fact that both DOA and SoulCalibur are unlikely to get sequels any time soon is also very heartbreaking.

I was way past my anime phase when I became aware of Guilty Gear's existence, so I was at first hesitant of checking it out. However, a chain of events led me to eventually get Rev 2. See, Haohmaru was a guest on SoulCalibur VI, and Baiken was a guest in Samurai Shodown and I guess you see where I'm going with is. This is why guests should absolutely not go away, but it is much better they remain actual (fighting) video game characters first and foremost and not stupid horror movie characters that haven't been relevant for decades (fuck every single MK12 guest, but especially RoboCop) Rev 2 is so much fun. It's still hard however, so I'm not yet ready to fully embrace Guilty Gear, but Strive looks more and more appealing each day is all I'm saying. Jack' O and I-No may have helped.

Virtua Fighter forever revolutionized the genre by moving things for the first time in the third dimension. I only had a VF4 demo as a kid and I was creeped out by having to fight Shun Di, a drunken old creepy guy, in a dark cave on a raft as Sarah so I never touched the series again until 5. The game is really fun and I will forever be grateful for it because it eventually lead to Tekken and DOA's creation, but while MK having a "good" story mode does not automatically make it a good game, Virtua Fighter having NO story mode, not even arcade endings, doesn't help it's case all that much either.

I've been contemplating trying out BlazBlue lately, Rachel, Taokaka and especially miss Litchi look really promising, but I'm trying to let the thought mature in my mind first rather than making an impulse purchase. I haven't played enough of any of its installments to have an opinion on it, but I know tons of people love it so it must have a few things going on for it, right?

Shout-out again to Samurai Shodown, I love the "fencing" aspect of its gameplay, but I'm just not as invested to it's cast as I am in KOF's yet. I've also always wanted to try out Darkstalkers but Capcom seems to be hellbent on wanting to make this franchise DIE. I don't understand why they don't at least start adding it's cast in Street Fighter as "permanent guests", in the same spirit as Final Fight characters keep on coming back. Morrigan is too good a character to be left to rot. I'd also love to try Killer Instinct, but it's another Xbox exclusive so RIP. Finally, I do own the first Injustice, but American comic book super heroes have always been morbidly boring to me (except Spiderman and Batman & co.) so, consequently, both Injustice and Marvel vs. Capcom are of no interest to me at all.

#Mortal Kombat #Street Fighter #Tekken #The King of Fighters #SoulCalibur #Dead or Alive #Guilty Gear #Virtua Fighter #Video Games #Gaming #Fighting Games

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lilbitofmac · 1 year

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// question for you, dear mac, if you're up for it. i've been thinking about getting back into drawing. it's been *years*, and i was curious if you had any advice for wading back in, especially as it comes to warm up exercises and just getting started? i know that there's a degree of 'you just have to do it'; it's always what i tell writers. but i've been so stuck on how to do some of this on *easy mode* so i don't overwhelm myself. if you're up for sharing your thoughts with all of us! ^_^ love you bunches!

Oh man, I honestly might not be the best to ask for advice LMAO but I can certainly try to help!

More often than not what stirs me to draw is whatever is at the forefront of my attention span. Any hyperfixation I latch onto is the driving force behind not only my ability to draw, but my motivation to do so. So, genuinely, just draw what you’re most passionate about at any given time! It’s perfectly okay if you want to do studies with different aspects of art like anatomy, color theory, etc. but if you’re just dusting off the old drawing tools, I’d recommend centering it around something that gets your hand itching to create. Probably bad advice recommending skipping the basics, but it usually discourages me from creating art, so I hate recommending that as a first step.

Creating is a lot easier said than done when jumping back into drawing, though. So, seriously, I recommend finding some of your favorite art pieces and tracing over them to get back in the groove. People always always look down on tracing, but it’s seriously so helpful as an exercise as long as you’re not posting it and claiming it as your own. That’s what I did when I was a kid, and it helped me find my own style and art process. Tracing can also be beneficial in helping you find the specific look you want for your art. Try different pens, colors, shading to find what you’re comfortable with without having to worry about WHAT you’re creating. That’s where a lot of people get hung up on.

That advice is mostly targeted at digital art, so if you’re working with traditional media, start practicing finding ✨shapes✨ in those art pieces you love. If you need a visual for what I mean, just ask and I can either make something or find some links for you— I know that’s kind of vague =w=;; Anyway, pull the art up on your phone or computer and try and copy it down onto paper. Focus on visualizing the shapes that make up a piece to make it easier to mimic. I always fall back onto traditional art when I’m trying to adjust my style since digital art has its own pressures that get in the way for me.

After you get a bit more comfortable, start finding some references for ideas that are rattling around in your head! Start simple since you don’t want to burn yourself out too much. Do you like drawing character’s faces? Expressions? Environment? Clothing? Hands? Feet??? Little sus but who am I to judge… Tackle your favorites first and slowly start branching out into more complicated pieces! If things aren’t looking right to you, watch some speedpaints or tutorials for your specific hang ups. Also, START COLLECTING ART!!! My phone storage is 99% of art that makes me go “OH WOW.” Figure out WHY a specific art piece calls to you and practice implementing it into your own pieces!

Mainly, don’t stress about your work and just have fun with it! It’s very very easy to start comparing your work to others, but if you’re wanting to create, focus on that feeling: of that joy from putting an idea onto paper and bringing it to life!! If you’re still facing hang ups, more than likely you just have to power through it until you reach a break through. That’s where the “practice makes progress” comes in, sadly 😮‍💨

#sorry if this is total nonsense #It’s difficult understanding specifically what my process is since in my current art journey I just slap shit down and be done with it LMAO #no thoughts head empty here on the Mac Train™️#response #also sorry for no read more option!!#I hate clogging up the dashboard but I’m too lazy to get off mobile 😅

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femboyandchad · 4 months

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How Mari was made

So I'll try to keep this short and easy to read. But Mari is one of my original OC's dating back I wanna say around 2008, but I wanna think I've been drawing him since 2006 since I drew so many emo characters for about as long as I can remember during the 2000's. Started off as a tomboy named Sally and went through many iterations over time where I eventually just rolled back to the more traditional style how you see him today. Except now he's an emo femboy So why do I favor Mari over Chad in terms of art being posted? To be frank, It's because Chad more or less was not exactly planned and was more or less a stage point for Mari in their shorts debut. Chad wasn't planned, carefully designed, or anything, which will explain why He tends to have a lot of different looks and styles to him. HOWEVER! Regarding Chad, during the time of Mari's design when he was originally a tomboy, Mari did have a companion but it is nowhere near the level of Chads design or chemistry. So even though the modern Chad you're seeing now wasn't entirely planned, it's still holds the original idea of what was planned for a long time. The original companion idea was actually nowhere near as clean as chads design, but more or less a way more grittier and rugged looking, where he's skinny, wears rugged long jackets, has a scruffy beard, somewhat Murdoc like hair covering his entire eyes, smokes, and has a super soft and deep voice. and the chemistry with this guy was a lot more depressing, edgier, and darker tone with Mari. I sometimes do wanna go back to what was originally planned back when I started drawing the two dynamics all those years ago. But I also understand people do actually enjoy Mari and Chads dynamic a lot. And unfortunately a lot of those old pictures of the originals are long gone, but maybe I can try and post modern versions of how they were supposed to look to see if anyone might be interested in the idea. Anyways thanks for reading! -Dark

#femboy and chad #darkseptor #mari the femboy #character design #original character #mari #emo #2000s

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mayordoi · 4 months

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huzzah! 2023 art review!

it’s almost the end of the year, wowzers! i always do one of these art review thingies since i always like looking back at the art ive made :> last year i posted the review on my other account and left it at there, but this year i want to actually review each month and notable pieces i made… just for fun!

this post is very much just for me lol, but i hope someone out there enjoys it. month-by-month review + previous year in reviews will be under the cut! 🩷

(also, shoutout to tumblr for going rouge and posting this way way earlier than i had scheduled 😍 luckily tumblr post editor is weirdly based and kept all my embedded links when i pasted it from the old one? hell yeah)

Jan: started off the year with a painting of my beloved ocs after ending last year with one! (and i will be talking about my older year in reviews, rest assured). this was my obligatory cute shared scarf art, and i wanted to try attempting to render something more involved like two characters and draping cloth. i don't think the result was too shabby, though this was before i discovered my favorite rendering brush for procreate, so in hindsight, it looks kinda flat and boring now. where's all the crunch? ah but anyway, starting a whole year with your art in a mid place compared to what you made later on is par for the course.

Feb: probably the month where i had the least art to put here, i remember scraping a little to find one. this was a chrobin piece i made in my sketchbook! nothing too noteworthy... i think i tried doing a slightly different approach to coloring with markers (applying the color before the lineart) and incorporating paint, but i remember this one giving me trouble. first of all, the size i drew this in was really small (it was in a small sketchbook and i decided to mask the margins with comparatively wide masking tape), and second of all the paper was absolutely NOT built for gouache, so it ended up a kind of wrinkly and muddy mess. i mean i'm still not the best with gouache now but still, not my best.

March: a redraw of a robin piece i made back when i was still on amino. i probably won't share the old versions because they're crap, so just trust me on the redraw part. anyway, the last iteration of the concept was in 2019 i think? and while i was proud of it for a while, its luster finally faded and i decided to try doing it again in procreate. this was when i discovered my love for the soft chalk brush in the jingsketch basics brush pack. for a while i've been using the hard render brush in that pack to render, but this one's texture and chalkiness totally changed the game. i was in love!! also tried to be a little more crazy and vibrant with how i applied the base colors, using saturated colors across the board. this process didn't consistently stick, but i think it yielded some neat results here. another hit from this month was my piece of grandmaster robin, since i'm really proud of the detail here!.

Apr: guys, april was MY MONTH! i remember making so much art in just a few weeks, something just clicked in my brain i guess. i chose my drawings of hagane rin and len since this was when i truly began to get comfy in my lineart era (after the grandmaster drawing). this month was full of detailed line drawings at that, but this one was what made me both enjoy the process a lot and do more of it. hell yeah. other hits: vocaloids at mcdonald's (i drew a background omg!!!), alice in ny fanart (just the euphoria of finally nailing a composition for this piece after struggling with it in november was great), and the end-world normopathy fanart (it's a line drawing, and a traditional one at that. i was happy with incorporating gold accents into my typically monochromatic style when it comes to my line-focused drawings as well as getting tamari's mechanical details nailed).

May: hell yeah. evil power couple time. this one was another line-art heavy one since i thought it fit the vibe. the softer colors in the background i feel like could have been executed a little better, but i do like how this came out, especially the armor (good god fe armor is a pain to render, but i think i've gotten better at it this year! middle school me would be so jealous). not much else to say here. Other hit this month would be my alice of human sacrifice fanart, another line-heavy traditional drawing. i think it turned out nice, especially for a crammed composition lol.

Jun: another end-world normopathy-centered fanart. i mentioned it in my og post but i was trying out a slightly different painting style where i did a black-and-white base first and then added colors as an overlay (also in the initial upload of the post i was so fucking meek about posting fanart of mariyam's alternate design teased at the end of the mv?? 😭 sorry about that, i've edited it out but it's still in early reblogs. kind of cringe on my part). i didn't end up committing to this consistently cuz the beginning process was kind of tedious (plus i'm too inept to pay close attention to values anyway), but laying down all the colors after the long rendering process was rewarding! it's a nice alternative with i get bored with my other method to yield basically the same-looking result lol. this month featured some more pieces that tried using this process, like the one with my oc alice, lucina and dark pit hanging out, and f!robin's resplendent design from feh.

Jul: ah yes my typical flavor of "improvised oc art that i invent new symbolism for on the fly that i apply meaning to after i'm finished". kinda just wanted to paint something again because i've been doing a lot of line drawings lately and to go back to my old painting process again. honestly, i mainly picked this one because i wanted more oc art and non-lineart drawings to be in this chart lol. art i made this month that i'm real proud of is this family pic of some young cryptonloids (i really like how the colors came out on this one!) and my birthday drawing for miku's sweet 16, which was originally completed this month. i opted out of considering it for my july art to avoid confusion. also also, this very whack pathological facade fanart (plus some doodles i didn't post) opened my eyes to the beautiful world of NOISE and HALFTONES and just slapping crazy textures onto my art like nobody's business. hell yeah.

Aug: ok this one is kind of another piece i picked to represent this month that isn't quite my favorite but i chose anyway for the sake of variety (in this case, i wanted more traditional pieces and non-vocaloid stuff). for once, i used my bigger sketchbook to make a big n detailed piece for my boy's new brave alt in feh (that game has zero significance to me outside of cool alt costumes for my faves). my actual fave from this month was young miku/meiko/kaito chillin in their house; i'm real proud of the background and lighting! but i still like this robin too ofc, big fan of how the colors came out ;3

Sep: another traditional drawing! felt compelled to draw kandy again, specifically her evil miitopia great sage incarnation :> this one was pretty standard in terms of process, and not much was really done to experiment. just wanted to draw something cool of my girl for my sketchbook. other fave from this month is this sketchy miku i did, i like how loose it came out and how the colors pop.

Oct: pretty palutena!~ i think i went into this trying to do something a little different with my painting process (i think it was to try incorporating more colors in the shading like the blue in the dress or more saturated colors near the focal point, but i can't remember LOL) or try rendering a more detailed character w/ a background (even if the background was pretty vague). i like this one! especially the color cohesion, it's pretty swag imo. other faves from this month was fanart i made for the song "orbit" since i also like how the color cohesion came out for this one, and the maid dress/crossover drawing i made for cringetober. no other words needed to explain why.

Nov: another digital painting! it's yet another ghost song, this time "uncanny". i really loved the aesthetic of this song, especially its bold colors and simplistic shapes, so i wanted to try capturing it in my style. i really love how the colors turned out on this, though i've yet to truly recreate what i like about this particular painting again? regardless, it's one of my faves, deserving of one of my favorite ghost songs. few other highlights from this month would be my obligatory purple robin drawing for the month, my sketchbook drawing of my luka design, and my fanart of utsu-p's song "ga". i like how i was able to do a couple of my different "styles"/processes this month rather than just sticking to just one. they all have their own feel to them that i like to play around with depending on the idea.

Dec: and finally, we're at the end. like july, we have another heavily improvised oc drawing with symbolism i came up with on the spot. that's just how i do things. anyway, this turned out really good in my opinion! i tried to stick to a color palette i saved in procreate a long time ago, and damn is it a fine palette. it helped me get a little loose with the colors and solely focus on creating a strong composition with colors and contrast rather than get hung up on sticking to typical color palettes. i also really like how i did the background by essentially using the liquify tool to swish all the colors around and then polished it a little on top. made for a really cool effect. other notable work would be the companion piece i made with my other oc that had a similar style since i liked the process of this one. there will probably be more as of when i'm drafting this (at the beginning of december) but i just wanna be finished w this post already bro

all around, very satisfied with this year. there was kind of a lot of song fanarts (something that i am somewhat guilty about because it feels like i'm unoriginal or something, but i swear it's cuz i'm really passionate about vocaloid music and need to act on what my braincells do when i listen to certain tracks), but overall i'm happy i was able to maintain some slight variety in the art i made this year through my chosen mediums and "styles" or processes i use.

this was the first year where i really wanted to have a fully rendered piece i'm proud of to represent every month. now, i wouldn't recommend this since forcing yourself to make art is not a good mindset to be in (sometimes, with how early i pushed some pieces out in certain months to get the monthly quota over with makes it seem like i'm getting paid to have a pretty year-in-review LOL). i was pretty lucky to not really have much burnout i guess?

~~~

ok now that all that boring stuff is out of the way, here’s my previous years! this is the sixth year i have made an art review chart.

lightning round review time! (probably just gonna be more boring stuff)

2018: ok, so this was the year where my prime art hosting platform was… amino… specifically smash amino. as much as i could rant about how much i hate that place now, i cant deny that it got me creating a lot of stuff. also it was an actual date archive for my traditional art because i never got in the habit of dating my physical art 🙃 uh don’t mind the absolute horrid graphic design on this one. i grabbed a template which was probably saved from a bunch of other places from amino and… didn’t really know how the formatting was supposed to work. first of all, i edited this in picsart on my phone and the chart wasn’t transparent, and second of all i didn’t know you were supposed to crop only the main focus so it could fit and be a little more clear. hence why its such a visual eyesore. i've been meaning to remake it to make it a little less bad (once i get my hands on the traditional pieces again), but i guess its shoddiness adds to its charm, much like amino. but anyway, 2018 was a bit of a turning point year for me in the smash amino art biz. on amino, i mostly made copies of official artwork from smash (character renders and so forth), and this year i actually tried experimenting with my own original ideas and scenes (my copying roots were still around at this time tho, seen in the november drawing which is based on ssbu’s mural art. i mainly moved on to copying artwork from feh). this was also the year i got my ipad and finally got into making digital art. i didn’t have the knowledge of digital art that i have today obviously, so colors and lighting were usually on the plain side. i also hit my stride with making more ambitious traditional art that incorporated backgrounds and such, and they’re pieces i’m still really proud of!

2019: so, i actually made this chart some time in 2021 or 22 because i didnt make an actual chart in 2019 officially (i forgor). which bums me out because i deleted my amino account by then, so a lot of dates for traditional pieces were flushed down the toilet the one time i needed them. so, to compensate, i tried scraping any digital piece i could to fill in some spaces, which is why some are more underwhelming than others. but yeah since this isn’t fully accurate to my art progress that year, 2019 is a bit fuzzy. main thing of note that year is midway through i got really REEAALLY into fire emblem: three houses and drew a lot of art of the characters (not shown much on the chart because they were mostly sketches and whatnot). imo there’s not much improvement or stylistic changes from 2018 in this year to note. 2020 on the other hand…

2020: if it wasn’t clear, this was my jojo phase. i got into jojo at the end of 2019 and my downward spiral into jojo hell bled into 2020 :p as such, i made a lot of jojo art. and because i made a lot of jojo art, this was the year where my style shifted drastically. i feel like it’s a common phenomenon for artists getting a total stylistic makeover after getting into jojo. whether it’s to imitate araki’s style or just trying to accommodate the characters’… features, i ended up facing the same thing. gone were big round heads with tiny mouths and in were tree trunk necks and higher effort placed in learning anatomy, both for the full body and well as the face. it was around may of this year i got procreate and moved on from ibis paint for digital art. while i still have my personal hangups with procreate, im glad i ended up investing in it since it really just works for me!!

2021: around summer 2020 in peak pandemic mood, i decided to indulge in some nostalgia and listened to some old vocaloid tunes from my middle school days. and then i kept rediscovering more stuff, and then i ended up browsing producers' individual discographies, and uh yeah i am still suffering the consequences of my vocaloid renaissance to this day. while it wasn't prominent in the 2020 chart, it really started to leak its way into my art subjects in 2021. however, i still primarily stuck to my roots with fe/"smash"/jojo fanart. this year was mainly trying to find my style again i suppose? i had already learned the ropes of procreate, its limitations, and the options it has to aid with the art making process, so it was just a matter of flinging a bunch attempts at a ~style~ to see which one i liked the most. i did try finding a painting/rendering style a lot by way of copying (mainly guessing based on speedpaints) other artists' styles and process with digital painting which ended up growing into my own thing. i know they all sort of look the same, but march, april, and october of this year all had slightly different ways of doing all the shading n rendering for painting that i liked experimenting w/ in the future.

2022: by this point, i had fully gotten used to procreate and the methods i used to make art, and the vocaloid train had no signs of stopping. i think the main thing of note this year was that i was able to break out of the "5 million overlays of pink and purple color vomit" box my digital art was set it. while it used to amuse me when i first began abusing it in my art, i guess i just sort of grew out of it? it ended up making a lot of my art look homogeneous, and it took out the fun trial and error of picking the colors to match the atmosphere myself. i also tried to get more experimental with my compositions, mainly in trying to make them more dense with Stuff as well as finally get a little more comfortable with drawing backgrounds. besides those things however, i remember feeling my art progress was very stagnant this year, with not much noticeable change from january to december. perhaps i've gotten a bit comfortable with the state it's in. regardless, still a good year all around.

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whew. THAT'S finally done with. if you made it to the end of this very me-centered ramble, congrats. i will probably make reblog additions in future years to continue this little saga. idk if i'll be as detailed as i was for the 2023 lineup, but we'll see.

#not art #year in review #year in review 2023 #art review #fanart #mayors ocs #traditional art #digital art #long post #art #artists on instagram

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thevindicativevordan · 7 months

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Comics this week?

Action Comics #1057 - If this is the last arc for both the way I suspect I'm going to miss Sandoval just as much as PKJ. Like Sampere and Federeci he's an artist who could be a generational Superman creator but may be getting snatched away too soon. This issue is mainly just an interview between Clark and Norah, and in the hands of a lesser artist it would just be boring talking heads. Sandoval's portrayal of Clark using his powers to detect whether Norah is lying during the interview keeps the tension high, loved how he depicted Clark's x-ray vision and superhearing. Pretty obvious that Norah is an infiltrator sent by the Empire of Shadows (the evil Dark Multiverse Batfamily from the Batman/Superman & the Authority one shot that PKJ did). If this is the ending arc for PKJ, the Superfamily vs. the Evil Batfamily is a great idea for an ending.

Flash #1 - Good first issue, sets up an interesting Speed Force plot even though I've felt worn out on the Speed Force. Been out of the loop with Flash for a while and this did a good job of getting me up to speed (heh). Dedato art isn't a great fit with a speedster - conveying motion is something he's bad at - but it does suit the grim tone. Spurrier is a writer who loves to pack his issues with as much words as he can, which has the upside of making the issue take longer to read. Seems the comic industry is switching back to compression after two decades plus with everyone trying to ape the Bendis decompressed style. It's a welcome change because if you're going to charge me $5 an issue, it damn well better take me longer than 5 minutes to read.

Detective Comics #1074 - Probably my favorite issue of the run thus far, Nguyen is a treasure. Watters needs his own Ten-Eyed Man mini.

The Penguin #2 - The lesser King work with WW on the stands but still good!

Unstoppable Doom Patrol #6 - Burnham draws the hell out of the fight scenes and it was great to see old Morrison characters like Quiz. Kinda the perfect counter to Jane having every superpower ever just doled out to different identities.

Blade #3 - Slows down a bit but the Adana is such a cool bad guy and I'm loving the buildup to Blade's fight. Plus Blade keeps being the coolest motherfucker in the MU.

Immortal Thor #2 - Not feeling the new Loki design and Ewing is struggling with writing fight scenes as always, but man is that art gorgeous otherwise. Thought bubbles are such a perfect choice here because they are the equivalent of Shakespearean English for comics in terms of conveying "this is old school storytelling". Compliments Ewing trying to write a Thor run in the vein of the actual myths.

Avengers #5 - At this point it's a solid run, but not as great as his Strange book. Need to cut back so I'm dropping this.

Ultimate Invasion #4 - Oh boy do I have thoughts! So many I need to bullet point them!

Hickman has flipped the plot from Ultimates 2. Here the 6160 Ultimates are positioned like the 1610 Liberators in that they are going to be fighting to destroy the status quo, with Capitan America presumably leading the charge. Or maybe it will be Black Panther as the leader since he presumably will be housing the Ultimates in the one place not under the Illuminati's control: Wakanda.

Nothing gets erased via time travel which surprised me. For better or worse, this is what the new Ultimate Universe will be. No traditional take on Ultimate Fantastic Four ever since Ben, Sue, and Johnny are all dead and Reed is a good version of Doom. Reed will be on the Ultimates because Hickman can't leave his boy on the sidelines for long. Clearly Hickman will be writing Ultimates since I can't imagine anyone else wanting to write that kind of lineup with this weird a status quo. What the hell an Ultimate X-Men book is going to look like is anyone's guess.

Hickman has three big plotlines seeded here: The Illuminati carving up America and the Ultimates fighting back. The Maker, Kang, and Howard all trapped in the City which is sealed now but will open again one day. Tony Stark is "Iron Lad" which is meant to make us believe he is also Ultimate Kang, whether that's a red herring or a destiny Tony must face one day remains to be seen.

Other big plot thread is that one day the 616 Illuminati are going to make their way to 6160, likely with the help of Miles and that card Maker gave him.

No tease for Spider-Man, maybe that will come with the Ultimate Universe one shot. Either it's going to be Peter Parker because Marvel demands at least one relatively "normal" book to serve as anchor for all this weirdness, or it will be someone entirely new. Saw someone suggest Harry Osborn and fuck that actually could work! I don't think that's ever been done either. My guess is that USM will be a book about either Peter or Harry having been groomed to join the technocrats in ruling the world, but they end up rebelling against that. Most of Spidey's traditional foes are either mad scientists (Norman and Otto would easily fit into this as sub-bosses under Howard who are pissed because the Illuminati stripped them of their old privileges) or science experiments lashing out (Lizard for example).

I see what Hickman is going for here. In our world the techbros wield power equivalent to heads of state, Hickman just flat out made them the actual heads.

It's an interesting setup, but it's weird. I dunno if Marvel fans will get on board with this, it's so utterly at odds with well, everything. It's not 616, it's not the MCU, and it's not 1610. Everything here is taking full advantage of being an alternate universe, and I don't know how Marvel fans will react to that. Another problem is this Ultimate Universe already carries a lot of baggage. Don't know who the Maker is? You're going to be utterly lost with what the hell is going on. Original Ultimate Universe lasted as long as it did because it was easy to get into for newcomers and featured streamlined reimagining of the classic characters for oldheads. Hickman said his new UU would be an inversion of that and he didn't lie.

I'm concerned that approach is going to make this new Ultimate Universe short lived. Say you're one of the countless people who will presumably jump in on Hickman writing Spidey without having read all this beforehand. If Spider-Man is as changed as Iron Man or Reed are, that's going to be a turn off for people because they'll reject how different he is from what they expect.

#weekly reviews

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