UCF Class of 2022

I've been getting back into comics while I wait for more info from my concept job, and I thought I'd make a post about something very important to me, which is COMIC PANEL VARIATION and HOW TO THINK ABOUT IT.

Also, yes, before you ask, these rules can absolutely be broken. I strategically break them to create a noticeable shift or flow in the storytelling, like so:

Bounce light is something I didn't cover but I adore it!

Gamut Mask

(image via )

James Gurney is an absolute master and gives really good clarity on colour techniques. Yes, it is traditional paint focused, but the principles are the same. Yes it is informed by the environmental colour but as a painting technique it is achieved this way!

While it's not super important to know about the mathematical side of blend modes, I think it's worth knowing at least enough about how each of the categories of blend modes works and why they do what they do; if for no other reason than having a starting point when you start experimenting with them in your work.

An overview of the basic blend modes and how they work from Genevieve's Design Studio: Accessible with minimal color knowledge; practical and illustration focused. https://youtu.be/kMc87hQrJd0?si=TWCB365pKSfWS8p0. (16 minutes) This creator also has a ton of free resources you can download, including a Blend Modes cheatsheet, but fair warning: you have to create an account to get them!

morpho books

figure drawing for all it's worth (+ creative illustration)

framed ink

will eisner comics and sequential art

will eisner graphic storytelling and visual narrative

understanding comics (+ making comics)

folder of various animation production art

burne hogarth drawing dynamic hands

perspective for comic book artists

michael mattesi force drawing

the animator's survival kit

color and light james gurney

for environments:

shot deck is a massive database of film shots searchable by grading, tod, shot type, characters and content! Studying from films really helps improve your values and composition as the shots are usually very carefully constructed! It helps you find ways to maintain realism while still packing mood and narrative into your work!

master paintings! I recommend the orientalists like Jean Leon Gerome in particular their environments had great compositions and throw around a ton of colour and light! I like the modern artists Craig Mullins and Richard Schmid also, as there is so much impressionist lost detail and simplicity yet the environments feel so real.

The 1960s era disney background artists like eyvind earle are a masterclass in stylisation and simplification and make a wonderful choice for studies. (That being said modern disney visdev artists like Nathan Fowkes are just as fantastic to study for the same reason)

architectural photography can be a great resource too- I love to look for work by urbEX people!

thumbnailing and comp studies- trying to break down a photo into as few values as possible and still have it be readable- this really helps train your brain in the relationship between light exposure and local value.

Im begging you if doing it in colour is too hard to start with just do it in black and white!!!!! Greyscale painting is an essential step in learning to paint and understand lighting scenarios!! Colour is hard!!!

there is no substitute for going outside and doing some plein air painting- really looking first hand at how the light effects different materials and objects, how it bounces around, what edges your eye naturally loses in certain lighting scenarios. Just go outside and draw and try to notice stuff.

for characters:

figure studies!!!! from life if you can but if you cant there are a ton of great resources out there- personally I love croquis cafe and posespace, but if you can afford it (and are interested in intense anatomy study) then scott eaton has a site called bodies in motion which is fantaaaastic. I think by now everyone knows nyx and senshistock, I also use a lot of grafit studio photorefs to study more complicated poses!!

Master studies (again). I particularly like to study the work of John Singer Sargent, Joaquin Sorolla, Edwin Austin Abbey, Alphonse Mucha (his le pater compositions are out of this world), any of the New Rochelle artists (e.g rockwell, tom lovell, those 1950s illustrators REALLY knew their shit).

I literally have a resin skull on my desk that I've used to do quick studies with different lighting, just 10 mins a day back when I was doing it and it levelled up my skill a lot!.

Material studies are essential to leveling up your character painting!!! Look at fur, look at metal, look at the way something embroidered reflects light vs tooled leather!!

gesture studies! Look at a dynamic pose and see how you can exaggerate the motion in away that captures the sense of movement. This is tricky to start with but its really worthwhile especially when you combine it with other exercises. Mixamo is a cool library to look into for this kind of thing as you can pause and rotate the models in the middle of their actions!

breakdown the work of artists you admire- it's ok to study other living artists (and try to reverse engineer how they are making their decisions) it's a very effective learning tool! Really figure out what it is about that persons workflow you like, and how you might incorporate that element into your own. Obviously, dont post studies of living artists work!

The most important thing is that when you do a study you go into it knowing what you want to learn. Dont try to do everything at once! It's ok to focus on the muscle structure and not give a damn about the gesture. It's ok to focus on the texture of the fur and completely ignore the characters face.

The best way to keep doing studies is to find refs you like- things you are interested in and that capture your imagination! Follow your curiosity and remember that just a tiny little bit a day makes a huge difference.

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May I present to you, nationalclothing.org?

Online, sometimes you can find seamstresses and tailors of cosplay or larp costumes, who do historical dress. The makers live or die by the authenticity of their work as a point of competition. So sometimes they link to the sources they used. try insta and pinterest.

You may also want to try “history of fashion,” “historical dress,” “history of costume,” etc search terms. You might get links to book publishers of huge historical dress tomes from publishers like Phaidon, Rizzoli, Taschen, the Metropolitan Musem’s Costume Institute (X).

Or try the most important fashion universities’ publications: Parsons (X), Central St. Martin’s (X), The F.I.T. (X) etc.

Some book options:

My personal favorite that I own:

Fashion History, by The Kyoto Costume Institute

(only goes back to 1700s tho)

And the all-important

Or: “So you want to create a visual novel.” A bunch of resources and tutorials i’ve collected, unfortunately I dont have any tutorials for non-ren’py engines fave. its long so under a cut

Color theory schemes never really helped me.

It was focusing on saturation, tint, and temperature that gave me the skills I have now.

Here’s a compressed guide :]

with specifically the highlights and colors being hues that compliment each other, don’t distract from the scene, and make it more interesting/visually appealing

cohesive but still contrasting

This kind of talks about color and composition

This is a bit about landscape specifically

Values & composition

Contrast in composition

Balance in colors & values

This one's more for palette building but I think it's useful and can be applied to the other ones

Cohesion within compositions/lighting

"Chromatic fringe" - I also see people using this with shading, they bring in a transition color that is a different hue than the base color or shadow, it makes it so that less vibrancy is lost and it doesn't get muddy!

This one specifically has a lot of process behind the style of painting you're looking for!

Also one of my favorite artists who makes bright and colorful art like this is Not Sorry Art on TikTok & YouTube, her website is here and it's<3 my fav. She has some videos where you can see her process

with specifically the highlights and colors being hues that compliment each other, don’t distract from the scene, and make it more interesting/visually appealing

cohesive but still contrasting

This kind of talks about color and composition

This is a bit about landscape specifically

Values & composition

Contrast in composition

Balance in colors & values

This one's more for palette building but I think it's useful and can be applied to the other ones

Cohesion within compositions/lighting

"Chromatic fringe" - I also see people using this with shading, they bring in a transition color that is a different hue than the base color or shadow, it makes it so that less vibrancy is lost and it doesn't get muddy!

This one specifically has a lot of process behind the style of painting you're looking for!

Also one of my favorite artists who makes bright and colorful art like this is Not Sorry Art on TikTok & YouTube, her website is here and it's<3 my fav. She has some videos where you can see her process

I try to save resources when I come across them, just in case myself (or someone I know) ends up needing them, and this is one of those collections.

I have not tried all of these, so please let me know if there are any problems.

💻 Programs:

Digital Art Specific:

Krita: Open source free program

Light Brush: a web-based drawing program

Photoshop Alternative:

PhotoPea: online (no download) alternative to photoshop

GIMP: photoshop alternative program

Other:

Blender: pro-level 3D creation software

OpenToonz: animation

Inkscape: Free open-sourced program for Vector format files

Vectr: Create and export vector graphics as SVG or PNG files.

Polotno Studio: Free Canva alternative

💃References

👤 Humans:

Kibbitzer: Draws references poses and images

toshi: Draws references poses and images

Character Posers:

PoseMy.Art: a free character poser

Referenceangle.com: You can move a head in any angle

JustSketchMe: Character poser (Free limited version)

Poseit (app only)

Easy Pose (app only)

Other:

Wildlife Reference Photos

Floor Plan Creator: design a floor plan, then view it in 3D

x6ud.github.io: Skull poser

Character Design References: it has an overwhelming huge list of references for drawing

📚 Misc:

🎨 Palettes:

CoMiGo’s Palette Generator

Palentton

Colors.co

Colormind

ColourLovers

🎮 Video Games and Pixel Art:

Universal LPC Spritesheet Generator (free)

RPG Character Builder (Free)

RPG Map Editor 2

LDtk: Level Designer Toolkit

PixilArt: Create and share pixel art

LibreSprite: a free open-sourced program for animating pixel sprites

💬 Fonts:

Calligraphr: Turns your handwriting into a useable font

FreeTypography: Free fonts for commercial use

Creative Fabrica: Free fonts for commercial use (sign-up required. Click “Menu,” then “Freebies.”)

Google Fonts

💡 Learning:

Line-Of-Action: This one could go in references, but I didn't put it there, because this website is specifically for practicing art

Quick Poses: Practice drawing poses

The Etherington Brothers: A free encyclopedia of drawing tutorials

📃 Other:

TinyWow : Collection of several free online tools

Pattern.Monster: Create patterns to be used for clothing or website background tiles

💻 Programs:

Digital Art Specific:

FireAlpaca - easy and light to use. I've been using this professionally for 15 years or so. Has a built in comic page tool.

PaintTool SAI - excellent option for painters especially! Mentioning also:

Medibang Paint - works as an editing program like Photoshop, too. Has a built in comic page tool. Minus; contains adds :(

Editing (for professional use, too):

Canva - free editing and design program similar to Photoshop and Illustrator. Can be used for commercial use, too!

Pixelied - free editing and design program similar to Photoshop and Illustrator. Can be used for commercial use, too!

💃References

Free reference sources, including free commercial use:

Pixabay - 4.2+ million free stock images

PxHere - Free images & Free stock photos

Pexel - Free images & videos

Tired of having your artwork used for AI training but find watermarks dismaying and ineffective?

Well check this out! Software that makes your Art look messed up to training AIs and unusable in a data set but nearly unchanged to human eyes.

I just learned about this. It's in Beta. Please read all the information before using.

https://glaze.cs.uchicago.edu

&

The team that created Glaze is from the University of Chicago. Their names are each listed in full on the Glaze download website. (This group of students/professors did this for their SPRING BREAK 😱 so go give them some love lol)

It is free to download. No, they won’t ask for or raise money from/for this project.(stated by one of the lead professors of the project).

Glaze is designed to protect artists’ STYLE--which a bunch of ai people have been deliberately fine-tuning their models to mimic (and specifically of current living artists--small or big).

It currently does not protect against composition/trace-like theft (as seen when run through img-to-img) but that would be protected by copyright anyway while STYLE is not.

The University Team has stated that they are dedicated to continuing to improve the tool, like fixing bugs (like overheating older computers by taking up lots of energy when Glazing--it currently runs on CPU so they’re trying to change that to GPU, I believe) and expanding the type of protection given to artists (like working against img-to-img theft).

It currently only works directly on your computer (phones not advised due to current overheating issue, no tablets, or iPads, and no website runthrough since that would be insecure to breaches/scraping/hacks)

It currently works best on painterly artwork, but can still be used on other forms (team is working on improving this)

IT WORKS BY calculating the changes each image needs for the best protection against style theft by AI, and adds tiny changes throughout the piece, so that your style will, for example, confuse the ai into seeing van gogh. But the ai thieves will see a regular image in your style, feeding it into their model labeled as your work (thus starting the “data poisoning”).

Do not post the original unGlazed piece of your artwork after posting your Glazed version (obviously)

The Team worked directly with over 1,000 artists that were being impacted by the ai theft. Because the team listened to those artists, Glaze accounts for regular art thieves too (i.e. Glaze can’t be removed/cropped etc. like signatures or watermarks when reposted. It’s just part of the image, so even if it ends up on another site and scraped, the Glazing is still in effect)

When you run your artwork through Glaze, no information is sent back to the Team. (Aka, no scraping on their part. The app receives information from the Team (like updates) but no information from you is given to them through the app. Basically Team servers ---> You and NOT Team servers <--->You) One-way data street.

Brief misunderstanding happened over an open-source license for the front-end part of the app. (Used open-source coding for front-end, not knowing that code’s use-license states it is only for other open-source uses, not closed-source (the back-end code of the app is private to prevent counter-counter measure developments)). The Team took down the app until they replaced the front-end code with code written from scratch by the team. They are now not in violation of that open-source license since they are no longer using it. (you have 30 days to remedy a license breach once informed; they did so in 2)

The Team is currently in touch with Japanese artists to better expand the tool for use to protect their art styles

From what I understand of it, Glaze is an AI tool designed to be anti-AI (Think Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2: one Terminator robot vs. all the other Terminators 😂)

The University of Chicago created The Glaze Project, learn about it here, it's free to use.

They acknowledge it might only be temporary until AI figures out a way to get past it but they are constantly working on ways to protect artists from data farming so their work is protected.

I redid this list because broken links 💀

General Tips

Stretch your fingers and hands

Art is for fun

Never too late to start/improve

Using a tablet

Editing software: pictures & video

Moodboard resources

Comic pacing

Watercolor

Coloring

Color Theory (not children's hospital)

Gold

Dark Skin undertones

Dark Skin in pastel art

POC Blush tones

Eyes colors

Human Anatomy

POSE REFERENCES

Wizard Battle poses

Shoulders

Tips for practicing anatomy

Proportional Limbs

Skeletons

Hair Directions

Afro, 4C hair

Clothing

Long skirts

Traditional Chinese Hanfu (clothing reference)

CLOTHING REFERENCE

Sewing information

Animals

Horse -> Dragon

Snouts: dogs, cats, wolves, fox

Foot, paw, hoof

More

Drawing references sources

Art tutorial Masterlist

Another art tutorial Masterlist

Inspiration: father recreates son's art

Inspiration: Lights