J.Sukiidan Law

So to those that might not get many asks or just dont know what pose they might want to do here is the Palette-Pose Maker!!

Palette: [x] Poses: a/b/c/d/e/f/g/h

And I think it goes without saying that if you get a number+letter that dont exist pick again!

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYBODY

Just in time for the holidays! The steven universe vinyl Pop! figures are now for sale on the Cartoon Network website (Link HERE) and look for them at your local HotTopic in the near future. 

Squad Goals #Cosplay (X)

I was wondering how many webcomics there were out there with black protagonists (for my own reference). Then I figured plenty of other folks would love to see a list. So heeeeere we go! (Please reblog and add more!) 

AGENTS OF THE REALM by Mildred Louis

NIBI by Gyimah Gariba

DEMON STREET by Aliza Layne

VIBE by Dan Ciurczak

BALDERDASH by Victoria Goog

STAR TRIP by Gisele Jobateh

SCHOOL SPIRIT (FRESH ROMANCE) by Kate Leth & Arielle Jovellanos

ALL OUR CUTS AND BRUISES by My Sjögren Blücher

STEVE’S STORY (KHAOS KOMICS) by Tab Kimpton

DEMON HUNTER KAIN by Burrell Gill Jr.

SAFE HAVENS by Bill Holbrook

THE SUBSTITUTES by Myisha Haynes

VALOROUS TALES by Dashawn Mahone

M.F.K. by Nilah Magruder

THE IMMORTAL NADIA GREENE by Jamal Campbell

PRINCESS LOVE PON by Shauna J. Grant

SHADOWEYES by Sophie Campbell

CAN’T LOOK BACK by Sophie Campbell

STREETCROWS by Dieselhands

DOLLHOUSE by Ray Nadine

BASEMENT DWELLERS by Leland Goodman

SNAKES AND LADDERS by BriAnna Haley

ARCHIVAL QUALITY by Ivy and Steenz

NAMESAKE by Isabelle Melançon and Megan Lavey-Heaton

MAHOU JOSEI CHIMAKA by KaiJu

MISSING MONDAY by Elle Skinner

CRASH AND BURN by Finnaeus

TODD ALLISON & THE PETUNIA VIOLET by Nozmo

GLOOMVERSE by L.O.P.

PRETTY HEART BOUQUET by E Hetrick Jackson

RANDOM BATTLES by J.D. Benefield

BAJO-MANO by Talula Bertram

FASCIST FRIENDS by Erin Lux

Mosscreek Divide by Jake Myler

GALAXYS FOR HIRE by Shawn DePasquale, Sherard Jackson, Whitney Cook

OUTGROUP by Maddie Chaffer

MONSTER LANDS by James Nelson

BOUNCE by Chuck Collins

SEVEN by Davis Ketterer

RUTH & ANNABEL RUIN EVERYTHING by Chelsea McAlarney

Deak Sledge by Mike Williams

DICEBOX by Jenn Manley Lee

ENDLING by Jonathan Larsen and Cecilia Latella

LOVE! LOVE! FIGHTING! by Sharean Morishita

RESCUE ME by Sharean Morishita

THE WYVERNS by Dragon Bros Media

GODSLAVE by Meaghan Carter

ERSTWHILE by Various Creators

ROCK AND RIOT by  Chelsey Furedi

SCARFS by Mike Kirby

ANIMOSITY SONATA by Olivia Smith

When the VMAS were something to look foward to!

Booooooooo… what is this, Photoshop?!

Lagging brushes are an occasional problem in any illustration software. Here’s a troubleshooting guide for Manga Studio if your tools are acting like molasses. (Some settings may be different on Windows or if you’re running the Clip Studio Paint branding of the software. For what it’s worth, I’m running Manga Studio 5.0.3 on Mac OS 10.7.5. Yup, I’m behind the times.) 

There are a few options to beat the lag: 

1. Quit Stuff Bye bye, YouTube. See ya, Skype. Later, Tumblr.

Save your computer’s processor by quitting RAM-hogging apps and tasks while painting. Streaming audio/video will drastically reduce performance, but even leaving browsers open can slow things down, so best to just close it up. Guess that rules out Spotify, but then there’s always ye olde Zune. Gotta love cringing through those high school playlists while working.

2. Change Preferences Easier than changing your mind, and quicker too.

Check under the hood of Manga Studio’s Preferences for a few speed boosts. Do the following in these sub menus:

Preferences/Tablet/Tablet Settings: Change from 1 to 6 (I believe this option is Mac only).

Preferences/Performance/Undo: Lower the Undo count. Try taking it down 10-15 notches from default. You could also turn up that long-titled setting (“Delay before recognizing new object…”) by 100 ms, but I haven’t figured out what that does exactly…

Preferences/Cursor/Display Position of Reversed Cursor: Make sure to check “No Delay”.

After changing preferences, it’s a good idea to close and reopen Manga Studio.

3. Modify Brush Tool Settings Your brushes may take it personally, but remember you’re in charge here.

The Tool Settings window is a wealth of options for customizing brushes. Some are more processor-intensive than others. Here are a few of the best ones to modify: (Note: the look and behavior of brushes may be affected. You may want to duplicate and/or export a brush before changing its settings.)

Tool Settings/Anti-Aliasing: Turn down to “Little” or “None”

Tool Settings/Brush Tip: Reduce the number of materials on your brush.

Tool Settings/Stroke/Space: Increase spacing, but not too much. Brushes are essentially a string of material stamps. A low space setting means a smoother brush, but more work for your computer. Picture it frantically scrubbing a rubber stamp across your canvas. On that note, also make sure Continuous Spraying is not on.

Tool Settings/Watercolor Border: If your brush uses this setting, turn on the “Process After Drag” option. This renders the effect after each brush stroke and saves computing power.

Tool Settings/Correction: Turn off (or decrease) Stabilization, Post Correction, and Brush Stroke.

Tool Settings/Starting and Ending: Turn off all this stuff. Pfffft, who needs it, right?

Here’s a speed test after fiddling with some settings:

 Woooooooo! We’re getting faster! Still a bit laggy, which leads to one last tip:

4. Rework The Canvas Might as well rework my life goals too.

Okay, disclosure: The two gifs in this post were recorded on a 4500x3000 canvas at 300dpi with a size 500 brush to emphasize lag. This third one is recorded on a 1080x720 canvas at 72dpi with a size 100 brush:

Yes! We’re cruising now! 

Canvas sizing and resolution has a big affect on brush performance. It’s a bit of a conundrum. Getting the best image quality means working at a minimum resolution of 300dpi, which can be taxing for brushes on large canvases. So what to do? Just like traditional paintings start with thumbnail sketches, digital work can start on a low-resolution canvas. Here’s the method:

Set up your canvas normally at the full target resolution. But before drawing anything on the canvas, use the handy tool under Edit/Change Image Resolution. Reduce Resolution to 72dpi. Use this smaller canvas for rough sketching, background filling, blocking in large areas of color, etc. Then increase resolution to 144dpi for building up the body of the painting, still keeping it loose. (I’d recommend switching Interpolate to Hard Outline when increasing resolution.) Finally, blow it up to full resolution and get into the nitty gritty of rendering. This is where you’ll do the crisp line work, highlights, details, etc.

The idea here is to work big to small. This will keep away brush lag by using large brushes on small canvases. As the canvas resolution increases, decrease brush size and work smaller, tightening things up in the process. NOTE: Increasing canvas resolution causes pixilation. Don’t worry about it. This can be cleaned up in the final stages of painting.

Hope this guide is helpful! If lagging persists, remember to check drivers and tablet settings as well. If all else fails, Google’s a good friend ;)

BAM!

I’m out of ideas! XD

LOOOK ATT THIIIIS!!!!

LOOOOK ATTT THIIIISS!!!!

80

*O*

OH MY GOOD!!!!!

ThAT’S IT!!!!

Thanks for the heads-up about the portfolio website! I’ll look into that.

Anyway, uh, lineart tips-n’-tricks:

1) Find a brush/tool that makes you comfortable. Inking digitally was miserable for me until I found Frenden’s Brushes.

2) Don’t treat your inks like you’re just tracing over your rough. I hear a lot of people complaining about how their roughs are so full of life, and then once they ink everything flattens/stiffens out, and this is why. Think of your inks like an entirely new drawing, with your rough as a scaffold behind it. Don’t be afraid to go beyond the scope of the rough. Remember: when you complete the final product, nobody’s seeing your rough. But they will be seeing your inks.

3) In both inking and color, the greater the contrast = the more the viewer’s eyes will be drawn to that area.  Large spaces of black, thicker outlines, or areas clear of detail in an otherwise highly detailed area are a great way to get the viewer to look where you want.

4) Turn that canvas/paper!

5) If you’re using photoshop, and you can’t draw a circle, screw it – just use the damn circle tool. If it looks out of place compared to your other inks, erase and re-draw portions of it. Same with straight lines – use the damn line tool. Or if you’ve got a wicked curve, pop out that pen tool. Don’t hinder yourself because it’s cheating. Art is entirely constructed on lies, and when people look at your final product they’re really not going to care if you hand-drew that circle or used a tool.

6) When you get to color, remember that your lineart isn’t set in stone. Paint over it, erase portions of it, color it! Everything in your picture, including your lineart, is just blocks of color forming a lie. Use that to your advantage. Don’t think of your picture as just lineart -> shading -> color, look at it as a unified, final product. Or do challenge mode and straight up merge your lineart layer into all of your other layers (note: when I do this, I usually copy all the layers, then merge so in case I wanna undo I can).

7) YEARS WILL BE SAVED OFF OF YOUR LIFE IF YOU FIGURE OUT HOW TO SKIP THE PENCILING PHASE. I started teaching myself how to do this to get out comic pages faster, and holy shit. These were literally my steps with that Papyrus picture. There wasn’t any inbetween.

First step:

Second step:

It takes confidence and practice, but not having to go through a pencil phase basically cut down the time it took me to get to a more finished state in half. It’s SO relieving.

8) Personal preference: I hate inking in black. Black on white is literally the highest contrast between “colors” you can get, and after a while it makes my eyes hurt. I enjoyed working a lot more when I switched to browns/reds.

9) You don’t NEED to ink. It’s not a requirement. If you hate inking: don’t do it. Softer lines work great with color.