Art Refs

I know many of you artists - whether you draw, write, or compose - are frustrated that your original work, especially your dream projects, aren’t getting the responses you were hoping for.

I feel the same way.

But some of you express your frustrations completely destructively and blame the world for not giving you the spotlight.

When you do that, you’re blaming your problems for existing rather than adjusting and compromising to solve them. You’re making excuses for your mistakes. You’re demanding the world to change but you are not willing to change with it.

This is the perfect mindset to NEVER succeed in anything, ever.

You need to accept some basic truths of art before you can go any further:

Your art should teach you as much as or more than it teaches others: If you claim your art opens horizons and widens minds, yours should be the first priority. You cannot speak without listening. You are not a righteous prophet enlightening the heathens with the true word. You are one humble person and your art is one humble person’s story.

There are no new stories, but there are always new storytellers. That amazing idea you have that nobody’s ever thought of before? Someone has. But nobody has told the story your way, or drawn the character your way, or sung the song your way. Art is not about being new. It is about being you.

Popular art is all about the beholder. All these shows and games with so much fan art? They got to that level because they command a personal investment from and serve the viewer - they have worlds their fans want to be part of, and your canon will be swept aside along the way. You the artist are not a god or a wise sage. You are a guide and a footman. To be an artist is to be humanity’s servant, not its lord - and there’s no shame in that.

Most of your fans are not artists or art critics. While there will be a good number of them in your fanbase, the vast majority are not going to be super-open-minded creative thinkers who value every single opinion, outlook, and story just because it’s done technically well. They will be ordinary people with ordinary, selfish interests, and they will care about your content more than your talent. You have to balance what you want to draw with what everyone wants to see.

But the most important part of being an artist or really a person at all is to understand this:

Nobody owes you success.

Nobody is under any obligation to pay anything you produce a second glance or support or promote it in any way.

Nobody is spiting or robbing you by not giving you a like or a reblog or a follow.

Every single gesture of appreciation you receive from someone is a courtesy - a gift that you earn, not a right you’re entitled to.

It is not the job of your audience to love your work. It is your job to make it lovable. And just because you are working really hard does not mean you are working in the right direction.

I know that thousands upon thousands of artists put hours or months or years into a project and feel like they get nothing in return. Sometimes it is not how hard you’re working but what you’re working for that is the problem. 

Sometimes you need to slow down and think, “Do I have to have this just so? What would the kind of person interested in my work be looking for, and where can I address it? Am I maybe taking myself and my work a little too seriously?” 

And a lot of artists don’t realize that as an amateur, you are the sole proprietor - you are your art. Whether people like you determines whether they like your art.

And that’s why when you blame everybody else and post ungrateful, catty garbage like this:

… you don’t subsequently become the next Toby Fox.

The simple fact is that people will pay you attention if they think your offering + your hassle are worth their attention.

You need to create a world that someone other than you will have fun in and you need to be a good host to everyone who visits. 

You need a world that will welcome your fans with open arms.

You need to build a world people can live & play in.

And you and your world need to appreciate your fans just for showing up.

Because this is exactly what the big fish do.

because they spread your work around to more people without shanking you on credit and who gets the likes

because they make your work show up sooner & more often on searches and are simply a nice gesture

because they take time out and pay good money to listen to your story and make you from a pauper into a prince

I appreciate the likes

I appreciate the reblogs

Messed up and lost your line art PSD? I got ya friend. 

TAKEN FROM HERE: https://sites.google.com/site/houseotwisted/junk/20drawings

1. Draw the most common appearance for your character. This is your comfort zone. (Color)

2. Draw your character from the front, the side, and the back. This is something called a ‘turn sheet’. It’s a little boring to do, but will be very helpful to you in the future to have on hand.

3. Draw your character from the front, the side, and the back, but have them in nothing but their undies at most. This is to show off how your character is built. Drawing nothing but a straight pant-leg with no structure under it is no way to learn! (Skip this if your character doesn’t wear clothes)

4. Draw your character at three different ages than they currently are. (Must be noticeably different. No ages: 4, 5, and 6, etc.) Color one of them.

5. BANG! Your character just heard a loud noise right behind them. Draw their reaction!

6. Draw a bird’s eye view of your character.

7. Draw your character feeling very happy. Show body language.

8. Draw your character feeling very angry. Ditto.

9. Draw your character feeling very sad. You know the drill.

10. Draw your character with a different body type than they usually have. This helps you map distinguishing features onto different ‘templates’.

11. Draw your character if they were the opposite gender.

12. Draw your character as a different species than they normally are.

13. Somebody has just handed your character a live duck. Draw their reaction. Keep them in character.

14. Mary Sue the HELL out of your character. (Due to being asked “What is Mary Sue?” several times, I have included a link to the evil that is Sue: [Click if you dare.]

15. Draw your character lifting something heavy. (no magic allowed!)

16. Draw your character in an opposite role than they appear in your story/continuity.

17. Draw your character doing something they enjoy.

18. Draw your character doing something they do NOT enjoy.

19. Draw your character in a dynamic pose that is not a profile shot (from the side).

Monument Valley honestly kept me from having a panic attack a few weeks ago. 

I was on hold with my bank for roughly a half hour because someone had stolen my debit card number and had charged a couple hundred dollars worth of stuff to it. All I could think about while I was on hold was what if my rent check bounces, I can’t afford the late fee I’ll be slapped with and I’m already on bad terms with my super - and I felt that horrible grip around my chest squeezing down and my breathing getting faster. 

Normally I can just drink a cold glass of water and sit in front of my ac (to remind myself that no, my throat is not actually closing up, and that yes, I can still successfully get air into my lungs with the help of a fan) but this time neither of those tricks did anything. Well actually that’s not true, they reminded me that I was alone in my apartment, and if couldn’t find a way to calm down, I wouldn’t necessarily be able to get help - which only scared the shit out of me even more. 

So I sat in front of my AC and pulled up the brightest, happiest looking app I have on phone, which is Monument Valley, and within ten minutes of building pathways to guide the princess through the castle I was breathing normally.  I found myself thinking, look at this bitch, you’re already solving this, this will be cleared up with your bank in the next half hour, and in case your check bounces, you’ll have documentation as to why to show your landlord. On good days, it’s sometimes honestly as simple as helping a tiny me walk through a beautiful castle while solving simple puzzles to remind myself:

In Europe, there was a long period where there was “official” art – art as defined, judged, and taught by the Académie des Beaux-Arts and other academies like it. 

and … that seems like a good idea, right?

It doesn’t, but nevertheless, the academies had a heyday in the second half of the 19th century, and held on right up through WWI (after which art kinda exploded, but that’s a story for another time).

Students in these academies drew careful, careful drawings of plaster casts of famous sculptures; drew studies of famous drawings and paintings, and they did a lot of nude life drawing. Like, A LOT of nude life drawing (all male nudes, because late-19th-century). The goal for these students was to train their eyes to see proportion and form, to build up a strong memory of the figure in many poses, and to build up lots of reference material to use later.

Many aspiring artists couldn’t afford to go to these academies, or couldn’t get in, or couldn’t travel, etc. Enter Charles Bargue! He made a whole series of lithographs of plaster casts, famous drawings, and life drawings, and produced a book for home-schooling yourself according to the academy style.

Academic art is largely ignored, now, because it’s endlessly fussy and corny and kitchy – look at this, for instance:

That’s a painting by our buddy Charles Bargue, and it’s technically very, um, exact. But its a pretty bluuuhhhhh painting. It has a dog in it, which is nice, but it’s mostly a pure demonstration of skill. Chuck definitely knew how to use a paintbrush, but not many people are clamoring to paint more of these. 

Academic artists were the ones who ridiculed the impressionists and the fauves, and didn’t invite ‘em to any of their (probably really boring) parties. Their teaching methods were just as rigid and boring as their paintings. So they’re not big in the art world anymore.

BUT here’s the thing about the Bargue course – sure, lots of boring academic painters used it, but so did this guy:

He copied every plate in the book in 1880, and then AGAIN in 1890. Van Gogh was constantly honing his craft – and ‘rigid’ and ‘boring’ are not words that apply. Here’s what he had to say:

“Careful study and the constant & repeated copying of Bargue’s exercises have given me an insight into figure drawing. I have learned to measure and to see and to look for the broad outlines, so that, thank God, what seemed utterly impossible to me before is gradually becoming possible now. I no longer stand as helpless before nature as I used to do.”

I mean, how many learn-to-draw-by-mail courses have testimonial quotes FROM VINCENT VAN FREAKING GOGH? He was probably a one-off, though, right? But no, who else studied the Bargue course? This guy:

Yeppers, Picasso also cribbed from the Bargue course.

So get yourself a big pad of newsprint, a charcoal pencil or two, a skewer, and a kneaded eraser – all of which will cost you maybe $10 total. Then get yourself a copy of the Bargue course (download a strangely-formatted PDF of it for free here, or I guess buy it on amazon if you’ve got the dough).

train your eyes to see proportion and form accurately

learn to see the broad outlines hiding behind the details

build up a strong memory of the figure in many poses

build up lots of reference material to use later

pretend you’re vincent van gogh without having to do anything to your ears at all

Meltdown - Submitted by Salison

There are a few programs I use on an almost daily basis as an artist and illustrator which I find invaluable, but that seem to be unfortunately more secret than they deserve to be. Which is too bad, because they solve a lot of small workflow problems that I think a number of people would find useful!

I’ll keep this list limited to my big three, but it is organized in order of usefulness. (And incidentally of compatibility, as the latter two are Windows-only. Sorry! Please do still check out PureRef though, Mac users.)

1. PureRef

PureRef is a program specifically designed to make it easier to view, sort, and work with your references. I actually put off downloading it initially because it seemed redundant– couldn’t I just paste the refs into my PSD files? Indeed, the only real barrier to working with PureRef is that learning the keyboard shortcuts and the clicks to move around the program takes a little while. But getting over that hump is well worth it, because it has some distinct advantages over trying to organize your refs in your actual art program.

Firstly, you’re no longer bogging down your actual PSD file with extra layers, nor having to fight with said layers at all– PureRef has no layer panel, so you never have to scramble to grab the right one. All images you paste into the program retain their original resolution data, so you can resize, rotate, crop, etc as needed without distortion. If you find yourself needing to adjust the values, color, etc of a ref image, you can just copy paste it into Photoshop, make your adjustments, and copy paste it back into PureRef.

The other great advantage is that you can toggle the program as ‘Stay On Top’ and keep it above Photoshop (or whatever else)– which was always a problem when trying to make a reference collage in a separate PSD file. I find that I just don’t look at my references as much as I should when they are on a second monitor, and this solves that problem.

I’ve used it religiously for about a year now, creating a new PureRef file for every illustration I do, as well as a few for specific characters, cultures, or settings in personal projects. As you can see in the example above, I like to sort my images into little clusters or ‘islands’ of specific content, so that I can easily scroll out to see the entire reference map, then zoom in to the relevant cluster easily.

There is one big tip I would suggest for using this program, if you have the harddrive space: As soon as you get it, turn on the ‘Embed local images in save file’ option. This will make your PureRef files bigger, but you’ll never have to deal with a ‘broken link’ if you move around the source files you originally dragged in.

2. Work Timer

This is such a simple little app that it doesn’t have a very formal name, though I think of it as ‘Work’ or ‘Work Work’ (for some reason.) It’s a timer that counts when your cursor is active in any (of up to 3) program you set it to count for, and stops counting when you change programs or idle. No starting, pausing, stopping, or forgetting to do any of those three things.

I use this one to accurately track my hours, both to inform myself and for commissions or other client work. At the end of a work session, I take the hours counted and add them to the hours I’ve already spent on that image in a spreadsheet.

I have it set to count my three art programs (Photoshop, Painter, and Manga Studio), so based on the settings I use, it doesn’t count time that I spend doing relevant work in my browser (such as looking up an email to double check character descriptions or ref hunting), so to counter that, I set the ‘Timeout’ option in it’s menu to 360. This means it will count to 360 seconds of cursor inactivity before it considers me idle and stops counting. Since it instantly stops counting if you switch to ‘non-work’ a program, I figure this extra time just about cancels out relevant time that it ignores in ‘non-work’ programs by counting an extra minute or so when I walk away from the computer to grab some water or what-have-you.

3. Carapace

I use Carapace the least of these three, since my work doesn’t often have a need for creating perspective lines. But when there is architecture involved in something, this proves invaluable in simplifying that process.

Carapace lets you copy paste an image into it, and then drop in vanishing points and move them around to create perspective lines. (Though you’ll want to scale down your full res drawing or painting a bit to avoid lagging the program.) Like with PureRef, fighting the shortcuts is the worst part of it, though for myself it’s more of an issue in this program because I don’t use it often enough to remember them. Still, it gets the job done, and it’s easy to adjust the points to feel things out until you get them ‘right’. Then you just copy and paste the grid back into your art program and you’ve got that information to use as need be on its own layer.

Of course, using Carapace isn’t a replacement for actually knowing how perspective works– you still have to have a sense of how far apart the vanishing points should be placed to keep things feeling believable. But it sure does save you a lot of trouble once you do have that knowledge.

So, there are my big three recommendations for programs to help your art workflow. I hope people find them useful– if you do, please share so that they climb a little higher out of their unwarranted obscurity! And if you’ve got a favorite tool like this that I didn’t cover, feel free to share it in the comments. I know I’m curious to see what else is out there, too. Also, if Mac users have any suggestions for programs that fill similar functions, feel free to share there as well!

From [PUDLEINER: Mark’s Notes].

Ah well lighting in animation backgrounds are done with the express purpose of guiding the eye to where the animation is going to take place - think of it like setting up spot lighting on a stage!

In fact, in a lot of cases the su team do literally set things up with what are essentially spotlights

Note that all of the characters are in areas where the light is shining. This is done because your eyes are drawn to the areas with the highest contrast, so your eyes jump to the spotlights - and by extension, the characters!

Now if i show you some backgrounds without the characters, can you guess where abouts the characters are on the stage?

Now the thing to understand about the lighting in these backgrounds is that there are some rules and guidelines that inform the colour choices and value ranges.

Scenery is divided into planes, the Foreground, Background, and the Middleground which is generally where the characters are staged.

In outdoor scenery there is also often Deep Space, which is things waaay off in the distance like mountains.

Take a look at this background for example:

This background has all of the different planes, you can flatten them each down into a solid colour

as i mention in the key there, the foreground is generally in contrast to the background and deep space.

If the background is full of cold blues and purples, the foreground is going to be warmer colours like browns and greens.

It’s also going to be on the opposite end of the value range - deep space is usually pale in colour and uses the higher end of the value range, whilst the foreground is usually darker and uses the lower end of the value range.

the colour of the sky is very important to the rest of the colour scheme!this is because of aerial perspective. It’s a simple enough concept, but it does need a little explaining

This is easiest to understand if you think of a really foggy day - you know how things get really hazy the further out in the fog they get?

This happens on regular days too! It’s just that it needs to be super far away for it to be noticeable.

So, basically, the further away something gets, the less contrast there will be and the colour will become closer to that of the sky.

The reason for this is because of the water in the atmosphere - the sun shines on it and it reflects the colour of the sky, which is particularly noticeable on foggy days due to there being so much water.

most of the time, this means that things in the distance will turn bluer, due to the sky normally being blue.

However! SU regularly takes place at different times of day, so you can see how the colour of the sky and how bright it is changes the aerial perspective

as for actually setting up the lighting, there are some simple rules to follow.

the area of highest contrast is where the viewer is going to look. To understand this better, look at the backgrounds in black and white only:

Your eyes are drawn to Beach Citywalk Fries because there is a stark contrast between the shadows and the spotlight! 

It has the highest range of values going all the way through from black to white in the middleground.

The areas your eyes are not drawn to, however, only have a small range of values. The foreground goes from dark grey to black, and the background goes from light grey to white.

Generally, the foreground will be darker than the middleground, and the background will be lighter, whilst the middleground will have a full range of values.

I say generally as this is not always the case, there are lighting situations where the background will be the darkest part of the image

but they’re pretty unusual!

so in summary:

- figure out where you want the viewer to look, that should be the area of highest contrast. That means that there should be strong shadows and strong highlights.

- make use of aerial perspective to add depth to your scenery, the further away something is the less contrast it should have.

- Set your scenes up with the planes in mind, use the most values in the middleground and use opposite values for the foreground and background.

How they would react upon accidentally walking into a glass door

Their reaction to having their name spelt wrong on a Starbucks drink

What kind of vines they would make

Their reaction to your favourite character

How they would play The Sims

I am currently taking a class called “Visual Communications”, which apparently is the very first foundation class people take when they go to an art school.  The purpose of this class is to train you so that you are confident with your lines and won’t need to scribble too much while sketching.

Our first week’s homework is training on hand stability.  I’ve heard a lot of artists complain that they have “shaky hands” and so when they ink their drawings, it comes out crap, so I thought I’d share my homework with you guys.

Draw a line about 2 inch long, as straight as you possibly can without a ruler.  Go over this line EIGHT times without making the line any thicker.  Repeat this exercise 10 times.

Draw a line about half a page long, as straight as you possibly can without a ruler.  Go over this line EIGHT times without making the line any thicker.  Repeat this exercise 10 times.

Draw a line from one end of the page to the opposite end, as straight as you possibly can without a ruler.  Go over this line EIGHT times without making the line any thicker.  Repeat this exercise 10 times.

Repeat the above exercise, but with an arc, and then with a wave.

I can’t stress enough the importance of stretching your hands, and forearms every morning and every evening, spend 5-10 minutes going through a stretching routine. These are very easy to do, takes little time to do them. It’s VERY common in all animation studios. Conditions can slowly develop, the most typical one is Repetitive Strain Injury, it’s a prevalent condition resulting from overusing the hands to perform a repetitive task, such as typing, clicking a mouse, writing, and of course drawing. In simple medical terms, repetitive strain injury (RSI) stems from prolonged repetitive, forceful, or awkward hand movements. The result is minor damage to muscles, tendons, and nerves of the neck, shoulder, forearm, and most commonly hand and wrist, which can cause pain, weakness, or numbness. If you’re feeling some pains, tingles, weakness, or numbness in the wrist/forearm; one of the best ways to heal quickly are ‘Contrasting Baths’. What crazy voodoo am I speaking of? A couple different physiotherapists and massage therapists had recommended this technique to me several years ago, and for anyone I knew that tried it, they all say the results are fast and effective. Commonly used by carpal tunnel suffers, it’s a method of treating muscle soreness, swelling and inflammation, it’s also known as Hot/Cold Immersion Therapy. You can use the double sink in your kitchen at home, if you don’t have one, then get your hands on two very large identical bowls, it needs to be big enough to submerge your entire forearms from wrist to elbow. Fill one up with ice cold water (with a couple dozen ice cubes floating in there). The other with very warm water, not tea-kettle boiling hot water, just hot tap water, or as warm as you can handle, no sense in burning yourself of course. Have a stop watch or clock ready, and submerge your arms for 30 seconds in the hot, then switch to doing 30 sec. in the cold, and repeat a few times back and forth, 30 sec. a piece. After only a few times you’ll notice the hot water getting cooler and the cold water getting warmer, so then the technique grows to be less effective, but by then, the job is done. The idea is that the extreme heat and cold contracts and expands your blood vessels, promoting greater blood flow to circulate and flush through your arms, and increased blood flow is what aids in healing faster! Enjoy!

[Source]

For artists and animators. Take care of your body and your body will take care of you.