Fated_Mystery

Hi there,

There are many degrees when doing this, some more cartoony, some more realistic.

You could go for a more cartoony approach like Jiminy Cricket here, and squash and stretch the whole head. But if you’re going to be a little more down to earth there are some good guidelines you can follow

I drew this generic guy so you can see what I mean. Put very simply, you want to squash and stretch with the fleshy parts like brows, cheeks, and lips, while keeping parts that are more attached to the skull like eyeballs, bridge of the nose, and top teeth more anchored in place. The eyes can change shape as lids and brows come down and the cheeks come up, and they can stretch as the lids open wide, but they stay in the same place on the head, held in their sockets.

You’ll notice that you can increase the wrinkles under the eyes and even extend them into crow’s feet on the sides as necessary. The nose tip can go up and down a little but not as much as the nostrils, which can move a lot. The jaw swings down and back, and you’ll notice that the top lip covers the top teeth in this expression because the top teeth aren’t moving. The cheeks are where you can really go to  town, bulging them out on the squash and sucking them in on the stretch.

a vague transcript:

*Note that this is just how I do it, and not the right or only way to do light stuff

OK, to start off, you'll need a brush. I use a slightly modified Chalk_Soft from Krita, but you can use whatever vibes.

First, get yourself a light source. I tend to choose colors off of that (warm light source, cool shadows). in this drawing, there's some fire coming from the top left, so that's the main light source.

then take your brush, make it real big, set the layer to multiply, and black out where the general shadows are. You can set this layer to low opacity, but I just use really light colors.

now, a new layer, set this time to overlay. do basically the same thing, but with light! (I tend to make my brush a little bit smaller for this)

then I make another multiply layer, and size down my brush to do more detailed and darker shadows. (don't be afraid to put shadows in light places!)

then I use an addition layer to do some fancy highlights.

I already did this step in the last one, but: you can take the addition layer, copy it, and blur the copy slightly (filters>blur>Gaussian blur on Krista) to get a cool light bouncy more realistic look!

It’s a problem you see most often in anime derived from manga or light novels, but it’s also present in movies based on YA novels, and you gotta know what I’m talking about, start on black, opening narration, fade in as the main character explains the world and environment. This works in a book since the reader can’t see anything, they need the specifics of the world explained, but it feels like the movies are just like “well it worked for the book, it’ll work for us right?

I’d say it’s worse in anime, where characters will go on long internal soliloquies trying to explain their thought processes and complex emotions, which again, works for the manga, in a manga movement is very expensive, every single motion requires it’s own panel, which takes up the artist’s time, printed space, and a moment in the narrative, so it’s important to only show what absolutely needs to be shown. But animation is different, it’s all movement and the details are what sells it more than the dialogue.

The reason I wanted to make this post is because of one scene in One Punch Man that perfectly exemplifies how to translate a written thought process into visual storytelling. After getting punched to the moon (err, spoilers), Saitama has this thought process

and it’d be easy to translate that entirely literally in the anime, Saitama crouches, has an internal monologue as he tries to figure out how much force he needs to put into his jump, and then he launches. Instead though, the scene is done completely silently, to sell the fact that he’s in space, but the thought process isn’t removed, it’s just show visually.

He throws a bit of moon rock to gauge the moon’s gravity, then launches, it’s a much more thoughtful approach to the scene and the audience’s ability to interpret visual information.

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I started making monthly tutorials for my patrons and it’s been so fun! Last month’s tutorial was on color choices, and talks about using the color editing sliders to intuitively search for the right color combination. It’s a bit like being at a live demonstration at a workshop, with a casual style of explaining my process. I love doing these! 

Herdwick Ram

Ink and Gouache