artoftheoffworldlamb

2017

eyebrows hold power. use it responsibly

a blockbench tutorial for people who want to create their own 3d references!

Colour Tips by yuming_art

Another tutorial I‘ve made, about digital brushwork this time!

You can find more tutorials for a few bucks on my Ko-Fi Shop if you've found this helpful and would like to support me in making more resources like this🙏 ☀️🍃

A quick demo of what I mean because it's easier to show. Let's say I want to draw a guy pointing upwards, and I want it to be super dynamic for my dramatic scene. I pulled the first 3D browser doll I found (app.justsketch.me) for this, set up my guy and angle the camera. With default settings I get this:

While not strictly incorrect, it looks pretty flat. The hand is closer to the camera than the head, but it doesn't really read as such because it doesn't appear any bigger. The arm also has kind of a stumpy, unappealing shape because the forearm and the upper arm have very little size variation.

I see this a lot in art referenced from 3D dolls and it can work for certain poses and moods, but it's not the dynamic foreshortening many are looking for. The solution comes from the camera, so I go to the settings, adjust the camera's field of view and position it again for the angle and distance I want.

You can see how this affects the proportions and what the pose looks like. The hand is obviously bigger than the head and the hierarchy between the forearm and the upper arm is more clear. That is a nice, dramatic finger pointing reference. (I'm not wild about the big scalp but this is just a quick demo so I didn't spend a huge amount of time fiddling.)

The devastating version of this is when I see someone used a 3D pose ref but got bamboozled by the camera and now their foreshortening looks like this:

Tiny, tiny hand.

My point is, everything you view in 3D space is through a virtual camera, and it has default settings that are usually intended for easy viewing of objects in the scene, so it has a bias towards flattening the perspective and preserving proportions. 3D dolls are great for custom pose and angle references, but when you use them, locate the camera settings and make them work for you! Don't just settle for the default (unless the default already matches your creative vision) because the default might not be correct for what you're trying to achieve. If the app / software doesn't offer camera settings, it's rubbish and you should pick a better one.

I mean this with my whole heart; stop giving a shit about “the color of the year.” The whole thing is just corporate astrology, and it exists to keep creatives, brands, and consumers orbiting a company that absolutely does not deserve that kind of cultural authority!!

Pantone is not a neutral art resource. It’s a massive corporation that has spent decades trying to assert ownership over color systems through IP law.

Pantone asserts that its color numbers and pigment values are its intellectual property, and that free use of those lists is not allowed. This is why Pantone colors are often missing from open source software and frequently excluded from low cost or community built creative tools. It’s also why Pantone has repeatedly been accused of being intentionally vague about the exact scope of its legal claims. That vagueness is the point. It creates fear, hesitation, and compliance.

People treat Pantone like a design oracle, or get mad that “the color of the year is boring or sucks,” I need you to zoom out a little!!

The problem is not that a megacorp picked an ugly or boring shade.

The problem is that a megacorp is trying to gatekeep color itself behind paywalls and licensing schemes.

Color is not proprietary.

Color is not a brand asset.

Color is a shared human tool that predates corporations by tens of thousands of years. Using IP law to restrict how people reference, reproduce, or standardize color in software and art is deeply, unabashedly disgusting, and it actively harms accessibility, open source development, and independent creators.

If you’re going to spend energy being mad at Pantone, be mad about that.

Be mad that entire creative ecosystems have to tiptoe around a corporation’s legal threats just to describe colors accurately!

Be mad that open source tools are kneecapped so Pantone can keep selling swatch books and subscriptions!!

Be mad that “owning” color is treated as a reasonable business model or concept at all!!!

I am not concerned that Pantone chose a shitty color of the year.

HAIR TUTORIAL & OC ART CHALLENGE with Pixiv✍️🎨

A little tutorial and fun event in collaboration with pixiv. Hope this helps and please join if you have time! :D

[How to join]

💗 Upload your original drawing with the theme "Hairstyle" to pixiv with the tag pixivamb_miothle2

🎁 I will choose 2 winners to have their OC drawn

Edit: Found the section I bookmarked awhile back!