I Can Draw I Swear!

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.

2018’s Top Musicals

“Mean Girls”? In the musical list? It’s more likely than you think.

[Spoilers below]

Well holy shit. I think we can all agree, HOLY SHIT.

Playing Deltarune was the last thing I imagined I’d be doing on a fine Halloween evening, but I digress. Something interesting I noticed.

The Delta Rune itself.

The crest of the Dreemur Family in Undertale, is actually called the Delta Rune, which is an anagram of Undertale (unlike the title of the game Deltarune, which is one word). The interesting thing is the prophecy, which the wiki says: “The Delta Rune is said to symbolize a prophecy that predates written history. However, the original meaning has been lost in time. What is certain is the bottom triangles symbolize the monsters of the underground.”

HOWEVER. The new prophecy is that there will be three heroes, two of Light (Kris and Susie), and one of Dark (Ralsei [which I would like to add is also an anagram of Asriel]). Originally, I saw the Delta Rune of Undertale as this, 

with the arrows pointing outward, I always thought the two arrows going left or right being the choice of Pacifism or Genocide, and the bottom arrow being the neutral choice.

BUUUUT NOOOWW…

I see this.

The downward triangle not representing the monsters of the underground, but of the Darkner from the newly learned prophecy, Ralsei, and the two UPWARD triangles representing the two hero’s of light, Kris and Susie.

God damnit Toby. You had this planned all along.

So now we have a lot of questions. This world we explored has many similarities, but many many differences. To name a few, Undyne and Alphys aren’t a couple, Bratty and Catty aren’t BFF’s, Toriel isn’t with Sans, Asriel is alive, Frisk never freed the monsters and Chara, also known as Kris.. Never died. This whole world is like an anagram, just as the title of the game Deltarune is an anagram of the word Undertale.

And we have so many questions.

What is the bunker south of town? Is Ralsei a Dreemur? What is the second fountain of darkness? How does this connect to Undertale?

I think Sans might know.

If you complete Undertale with the neutral ending, you can gain access to san’s workshop, which has a strange machine covered, and blueprints with symbols you don’t recognize. “The second drawer from the left contains a badge. The first drawer’s contents change depending on some of the player’s previous actions; it always contains a photo album with photos of a happy Sans along with many other people the protagonist does not recognize. If the game has previously been completed with any ending, another photo will show up with the protagonist, Sans, and all of the protagonist’s friends. 

But.

After the v1.001 patch has been applied, and after talking with the Clam Girl and learning of Suzy, 

(Hmmmm, thats a coincidence of a name), there will be a card sticking out from the back flap of the binder, described as a poorly drawn picture of three smiling people with the words “don’t forget” written in lowercase.

“Three.. Smiling.. People..“

When you meet Sans at the end of Deltarune, he says he’s from out of town and just moved here, which interestingly enough, If you talk to the NPC’s of Snowdin, they say “Those skeletons showed up out of nowhere.” (referring to them being new residents of Snowdin), as if San’s goes where he needs to be (which is quite often the case as he teleports around the game to his whim.)

So I think the characters of Deltarune in the town, those we grew to love over these past three years, are different. But Sans and Papyrus?

Inspired by @starfishcactus ‘s  doodle

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