Hallie's Art Inspiration Blog

I have some older art tips that I keep forgetting to post here. I'll add a few in the next few days, at least those that aren't too outdated!

hoomans

https://x6ud.github.io/pose-search/

there are a bunch of free monitor tests, but here’s an easy one you can use. the passmark and eizo tests are also pretty good, though passmark doesn’t work in your browser. be warned that some tests may cause eye strain.

Just in case you forget this exists.

You can browse the most popular ones or search for certain colors, themes, and even specific hex codes!

When you find one you like, you can download a wallpaper swatch of it and also select the specific colors it uses to look at more palettes that use those same ones.

I give it MASCLES

And I wanna stress that when i say “top of the leg” i’m not talking about the crotch (please don’t flag me tumblr it’s an anatomical term) i’m talking about the point where the femur connects to the pelvis, which is higher up on the hips:

It’s easier to see what I’m talking about in this photo of a man squatting: 

So yeah if you use that measurement when using this technique you should get fairly realistically proportioned legs:

But remember! messing with proportions is an important and fun part of character design! Know the rules first so you can then break them however you please!

A glorious fuck-ton of perspective angle references (per request).

Perspectives Tutorial by DerSketchie

TUTO - male reference pose by the-evil-legacy

tuto - women ref poses by the-evil-legacy

Foreshortening Practice by Bambs79

How to Draw Manga vol. IV - Dressing You Characters in Casual Wear

HUMAN PROPORTION: SIMPLIFYING THE FIGURE USING GEOMETRIC FORM AND GESTURE by The Helpful Art Teacher

Basic comic interpretation - different camera angle by diaemyung

Have you ever been trying to draw tiles on a wall or on the floor in perspective, but notice that after you’ve drawn them, they don’t look like they’re all the same shape or size?  Well here’s a tutorial on how to fix that. Your picture probably looks like this, right?

Well, i’m here to tell you how to fix that…Let’s start out with your basics.

The gray line is the horizon line, and the black dot is your horizon line. These are essential for the first steps of perspective. Without these, your perspective may turn out wonky and just not flattering to the eyes. Right now we’ll work in One point perspective.

Now let’s pretend we’ll be drawing a hallway. Draw a vertical line where the edge of the wall is.

Now, from the tips of the bottom and top of your wall, you’re going to need to draw a line extending all the way to the vanishing point. If you’re working in photoshop you could either use the line tool, or shift+click. If traditional, you’ll need to use a ruler.

Now that we have the wall that’s in perspective, it’s time to draw the rest of the lines. here I’ve drawn the wall facing us that’s closest, the ceiling, the floor line, and the end of the hallway. ASSUMING that you are working in one point perspective, all vertical lines are straight and parallel to each other, and all horizontal lines are straight and parallel to each other. 

Now here I have erased the lines that extended beyond the back wall, and found the center point of the edge of the left wall. From there, you draw an extended line just as before towards your vanishing point.

now make a vertical line where your first “tile” is. 

now this may be a little hard to explain. Now you’re going to draw a line coming from the corner of the wall, through the corner where your line meets the tile you just drew, and all the way to the ground line. 

You see where these two lines meet? you’re going to draw a vertical line to the ceiling from here.

Like so! 

Now rinse and repeat! you should have perfectly even spaced tiles now! And if you have tiles on the ceiling

Just draw horizontal lines connecting to the vertical lines!

Tips on Drawing Hands Tutorial

Hope this is helpful!

Twitter

heres an example

and it also gives you the hex code values for them too its p neat !

Again this is my personal take on color! It really depends on the situation and what you personally value, and in the end practice is your best friend.

links:

genice’s color practices

color palette challenge (one iteration of it; there’s lot of people who made them)

(not mentioned, but helpful)

Patrick (H) Willems’s video essays on color in film; specifically his ones on

Wonder Woman and Marvel

I thought he had one on John Wick too but I can’t find it. If you like saturated colors though, check that movie out!!

SHORT STORY/ONE-SHOT/ONE CHAPTER/COMICS 101 CRASH COURSE RAPIDPUNCHES’ STYLE

I’m NOT an expert but I have some working experience I can share. You need experience to become great. Here is my set of instructions, tips, and notes towards making a 12-page comic.

My method is to work backwards. Personally I work “backwards” because the end is the only wholly necessary page or set of panels in the story. Everything in between is open to editing and hacking as the most important moments are emphasized and chosen.

I even plan/draw the end page first. The end is the last page a reader sees- so spend your freshest energies on making it as epic, memorable, poignant, and beautiful as #$%^&.

If you draw the pages from 1 to 12 sequentially you run the risk of fresh to burnt out- an uneven distribution of drawing skill. (treat the first page and the 2-page splash as you would the last).

Roughly… the steps to making your comic is

WRITE

PLAN THUMBNAILS

DRAW

…BEGIN THE WRITING (DO NOT SKIP NO MATTER WHAT) like this, in this order:

How does it end?

Does the protag succeed or fail?

What is the turning point of their story?

What the protag do that led them there?

Where does it start?

Who is this protag?

EXAMPLE:

Guy gets mauled by a bear.

This is a fail on the guy’s half.

The bear must eat something or he’ll starve to death.

It’s the guy’s fault the bear can’t find other food. He caused the avalanche that buried all the cabins.

The guy is yodeling in an avalanche zone.

The guy is some guy.

CREATING “THE BEAT SHEET” Take the above stuff and reorder it to make sense.

This guy yodels.

Echoes roll.

Snow slides down.

Avalanche buries the mountain.

Cabins are engulfed.

This bear has no access to cabin food and garbage.

Bear eats this guy.

Expand. Blow up important beats for emphasis. Keep less important beats brief.

This guy is hiking in the snowy mountains.

He comes across an avalanche warning sign.

There is nobody around but him.

A dumb expression forms over his face and he yodels.

Echoes roll but nothing nearby is moved.

At the top of the mountain the snow drifts twitch.

Guy, satisfied, hikes away from there still yodeling.

Frozen snow cracks.

Snow puffs billow and great slabs of ice crash down the mountain side.

Guy sees this and hightails it to safer ground.

Animals, people, are all panicking and getting pushed over by the rushing snow.

Cabins are destroyed.

The guy takes cover by an outcropping of rocks, fastens himself securely to the rock face, and waits for the avalanche to die down.

Avalanche dies down.

A lone bear shambles over from the other side of the mountain.

The bear goes to where a cabin used to be (only roof tiles are left). Bear sniffs a dish satellite.

Bear forlornly eats a food wrapper.

Bear tries to dig.

Guy comes down from the rocks he as climbing and sees bear.

Bear stops digging and sees him.

Guy runs.

Bear chases him down.

Bear eats the guy.

BEAT SHEET COMPLETED!!!

After the beat sheet, write up all the sound effects and speech bubbles and conversation/dialogue you want to be in your comic.

Since comics are a visual medium, highest priority is given to the beats. If a story can’t be told with the art without the dialogue– you messed up and it’s time to rethink your life choices.

Try to keep all your text chunks as short as a tweet. Professionally you don’t want more than 25 words per speech bubble and no more than 250 words per page.

Next is translating the beats to pages…

STRUCTURE OVERVIEW:

[1] point of entry, in media res, hero intro

[2][3] conflict. establish conflict, setting, and mood by the third page. [4][5] rising action/false resolution to conflict/investigation

[6][7] turning point/plot twist/epiphany (this one epic image, to page spread is pivotal, spend a lot of effort into creating this)

[8][9] aftermath/“darkness before dawn”/struggle [10][11] recovery/“rise and conquer”/“fall”

[12] resolution/final end/cliffhanger

[front cover][interior] [interior][back cover]

——————–

My maximum per page is nine panels but I’ve seen pages that have way more. I like to have about 3 to 4 panels per row or less but I’ve seen the “rules” broken before. Advanced comic book artists manipulate time with the number of panels and the size of each panel.

remember, DIAGONALS!!! open up an issue of batman, superman, spider man, deadpool or whatever youre reading theyre everywhere.

———-

…DRAW IN THIS ORDER:

Page 12,

Page 6 and 7 (this is typically one large image that takes up the space of two pages),

Page 1,

and then the rest.

ONLY “DEVIATION” ALLOWED:

Page 12 and 1*

Page 6 and 7,

and then the rest.

*Draw the first and last page as a spread in situations where the beginning of the story mirrors the end of the story.

Cover is dead last.

———-

(If at the very end you find out you need more pages and it’s absolutely unavoidable and totally necessary you have to add them in fours. Try to stick to 12 pages for this crash course.)

——————–

FURTHER NOTES:

Plan and draw the pages in spreads (the twos) since this is how it will appear in print and when you submit them to an editor for review guess what, the pages with an exception to the first and last will be reviewed as spreads.

You at most only need one establishing panel of the setting and environment (scene) per page.

Forget “true to life” perspective outside of the establishing panel). Practice diagonal composition of objects and subjects within panels. For dynamism.

You don’t have to present the text all in one go (one paragraph or bubble). You can and should break up paragraphs, sentences, and if you need to single out words– to make smaller, more easily managed bubbles to scatter through the panel.

Less important moments have smaller panels and or lesser detail. More details (or more word bubbles) slow down time. More drawn detail also creates a concentration of values (it’s darker and sometimes combines together as one shape or mass)

Know your light sources. Control the blacks. Control the values.

TIPS | COFFEE? :3 | dA | IG |  ♡ |  ❤ |  ⋆

People will seek you out before they hire two people who can only do one skill. 3d isn’t intimidating once you get the hang of it! Just another tool and one that could give you very strong advantage job-wise.

I am self taught and use Maya. I started it in college w/ a free student version.

resources:

First of all, thank you for the compliments! I think mypaintings look graphic because I mostly use flat colors and a limited paletteI can play with.

I took advantage of the Summer break to do a small step-by-step of the gouache painting I did today for the last Character Design Challenge. I haveto warn you, I don’t really have a special technique and don’t use tools likedrawing gum or tape to delimit the shapes of the drawing : for me, it’s mostlythe amount of time I spend on the paintings that makes them look clean and“solid” like you said aha.

This is my setting :

That’s what the inside of my paint box looks like.I made the colors myself, with some cheap Pebeo paint,mostly with the 3 primary colors (that’s why I have some fancy colors on theside, that are harder to make yourself, like Raw Umber, Raw Sienna, Ocher,Gold…)

I then do a light sketch, that I tape to my desk.Sometimes, I do a rough pass on Photoshop first, to find the colors andcomposition I want.

I can finally start mixing my colors on the tear-offpalette.I use a water spray bottle to humidify the dry paint inside the paint box.

Tips on how I manage to be “precise” : Iuse the edges of the brush to keep a straight line (and A LOT of layers ofpaint until I get the result I want aha!)

For this painting, I started with the blue colorbecause it was covering the bigger area but the wise thing to usually do is tostart with the lighter color aha! But that’s the great thing with gouache :you can always cover a dark color with a lighter one if you’re willing to waitfor the painting to dry and do a few layers on top of it.

At this step, I finished covering all the blank spaces withthe colors I wanted : it’s mostly colouring at this point aha!

You can now spend some time getting a “clean look” :try to get the colors as evenly as possible by painting one or two new layers on top ofthe first pass, while at the same time getting the shapes and lines right andsolid.

Finally, it’s time for the details! I use a small brush forthis step and spend a lot of time correcting my mistakes (stains, strokes…)then adding the last details like patterns, face, hair. You can also use aPosca or even a colored pencil if the brush is not small enough.

When the painting is finished, be carefull while removingthe tape so it doesn’t get ripped off! I usually scan it (but this time I had to photograh it) and then use Photoshopfor the Levels and Color Balance to respect the orignal colors as much aspossible.

I get asked often about textures and brush settings- As per request, here are some of my regular faves. These are four I made by scanning in all kinds of pencil and pen marks, then just doing a lot of fussing with settings and numbers until I got something good ahaha. There’s really no secret to making brushes, it’s just a lot of experimentation; but it ends up really worth it, and you learn a lot about what you want 🙌  

You can download them from -> this google drive folder of mine!

I use both equally. Drawing traditionally and digitally has different advantages for me so my process is a little convolutedhere it is:

step 1- do a thumbnail on paper to figure out page layout

2. model the background in maya if there is one

3. printout light version of just bg on my cheap paper. I’m drawing on 11 x 17in

4. sketch over printout

4.5 draw a better drawing if my first attempt sucked then scan that and place it in photoshop

5.get the figure looking acceptable in photoshop. I use a cintiq to draw

I have an easier time drawing digitally if I have an undersketch from a paper drawing. Don’t know why it just helps.

6. turn curves to red and printout on my fancy vellum bristol

7. final lines in pencil ( I’ve tried using real ink but I don’t enjoy it and I hate inking digitally) I ended up not liking how the arms on this panel looked so I fixed them with my red colerase pencil 

8. scan page and get rid of red channel

9. coloring! (bg isn’t finished here)

sorry for any grammar mistakes