afternoon decaf

Not sure about making a Newgrounds account yet. I just wanted an excuse to draw some TankMen

Anyways! I don’t think anything will happen to this blog. I’ve tried to keep it rather safe, but you never know! If nothing happens I’ll keep posting like normal. But if it gets deleted you can find me at

 https://twitter.com/HernyEd  For regular art. 

Some people have asked how I went about drawing the Overwatch cast, so I threw together a list of things I think about when designing characters: shapes, silhouettes, colors, and inspiration.

1. Shapes

There are three basic shapes in my toolbox: round, box, and triangle. If I follow my intuition, each shape conveys a personality. For example:

Round = charismatic, harmless, endearing

Box = reliable, uniform, traditional

Triangle = cunning, dynamic, competent (downward pointing more aggressive)

Shapes can also be combined for more complex characters

2. Silhouettes

Block in the character. If I can still recognize who it is, then it has a strong, readable silhouette.

3. Color

Sometimes less is more. Limit the palette for unity and impact. When working with three colors, keep the 60-30-10 rule in mind. Pick one color to make up about 60% of the character, a second color to make up about 30%, and the last color is about 10%.

When working with just two colors, use the 70-30 rule. One color is about 70%, the second is about 30%.

4. Inspiration

Designs come to mind easier when I’m listening to music, or when I have a mental image of something in mind. For example, I was listening to Klezmer music when drawing Reaper, and I was thinking of a chicken when I was drawing Lucio. It can take a while to warm up, so a good source of inspiration is important to stay motivated.

Beyond that, it’s up to you! 

I’ve been getting quite a few asks about the process for the patterns in my stylized artworks, so I decided to put together a couple of tips regarding them. 

Firstly, what you need are

—  CUSTOM BRUSHES  —

Most of the patterns I use are custom brushes I made, such as those:

For the longest time I was convinced making brushes must be super extra complicated. I was super extra wrong. All you need to start is a transparent canvas (2500px x 2500px max):

This will be your brush tip. When you’re satisfied how it looks, click Ctrl+A to select the whole canvas and go to ‘define brush preset’ under the edit menu

You will be asked to name your new glorious creation. Choose something that describes it well, so you can easily find it between all the ‘asfsfgdgd’ brushes you’ve created to be only used once

This is it. Look at it, you have just created a photoshop brush. First time i did I felt like I was cheated my whole life. IT’S SO EASY WHY HASN’T ANYONE TOLD ME 

Time to edit the Good Boi to be more random, so it can be used as a Cool Fancy Pattern. Go into brush settings and change whatever you’d like. Here’s a list of what I do for patterns:

- under Shape Dynamics, I increase Size Jitter and Angle jitter by 5%-15% 

- under Brush Tip Shape, I increase spacing by a shitload. Sometimes it’s like 150%, the point is to get the initial brush tip we painted to be visible.

- If I want it to look random and noisy, I enable the Dual Brush option, which acts like another brush was put on top of the one we’ve created. You can adjust all of the Dual Brush options (Size, Spacing, Scatter, Count) as you wish to get a very nice random brush to smear on your  backgrounds

The result is as above. You can follow the same steps to create whatever brush you need: evenly spaced dots that look like you painted them by hand, geometric pattern to fill the background, a line of perfectly drawn XDs and so on. 

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE

—  PATHS  —

But what if you want to get lots of circles made of tiny dots? Or you need rows of triangles for your cool background? Photoshop can do all of that for you, thanks to the magic of paths.

Typically, paths window can be found right next to Layers:

Draw whatever path you want, the Shape Tool has quite a bit of options. Remember, paths are completely different from brush strokes and they won’t show up in the navigator. To move a path around, click A to enable path selection tool. You can use Ctrl+T to transform it, and if you move a path while pressing Alt it will be duplicated.

Now, pick a brush you wish really was in place of that path you’ve drawn and go to layers, then choose the layer you want it to be drawn on. Then, click this tiny circle under the Paths window:

Then witness the magic of photoshop doing the drawing for you while you wonder how tf have you managed to forget about this option for the past 2 years 

You can combine special brushes and paths for all sorts of cool effects. I mostly use them in backgrounds for my cards, but you can do whatever you want with them.

The dude got arrested once before this for using a painter’s extension rod to point the stoplight cameras into the sky instead of cutting the wires. He didn’t cut the wires until AFTER he got out after being arrested the first time–which he did after posting facebook videos that prove that the stoplights are intentionally rigged to trick drivers into citations–the yellow lights at intersections with cameras only last THREE SECONDS, as opposed to the five seconds they last at other stoplights without cameras in the same county.

When he cut the camera cords, he reported his deeds to the news -himself,- and then politicians pressured the local police force into arresting him. The local police and sheriff deputies actually SUPPORT him for his actions because the lights have been killing innocent people! During his most recent arrest, one of the Sheriff’s Deputies actually -offered to bail him out-. When he got home again after these incidents, there was a surveillance camera planted at his house BY THE GOVERNMENT to watch him! His reaction to being surveilled? He painted over the camera in America’s flat out fucking ballsiest “fuck you” to the gubmint I’ve ever heard of. And it gets EVEN CRAZIER. After painting over the camera, suddenly this guy–his name is Stephen Ruth by the way–started GETTING ATTEMPTS ON HIS LIFE. He reports that a car intentionally tried to hit him in a head-on collision, and after talking about the car to his neighbors, they confirmed that the car in question (Or at least, one that was visibly identical, its occupants included) had been staking out his house! Somebody was legitimately trying to MURDER HIM over his discovery and his actions!