The Vampire Draws

Please be mindful that i didn't draw any chainmail underneath, first bc im lazy, but every armor from XV century had some : over the gambeson, under the plate, fully or on located areas. They also used pants gambesons.

Also this is just one example, XVth had so much armor variations for any of the parts above

Here're some references i like to use :

-> The Evolution of Knightly Armour

-> Age of Craft

Ignorance = Fear, 1989

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 |  ♡ |  ❤ |  ⋆

At the time of this reblog, it can be purchased for $0 with a fair price request of $3.

i think this is…actually the most extreme stupid dove nest I’ve seen.

Uhh....well, I don't have a clear process for how to do them, but since I've been asked how I draw and make my sketches, I'll show you how i'm doin thisssss

First of all, I must say that it all depends on your style; if you feel comfortable with this type, go for it!

An artist tip: #How to sketch faces with me part 1/?

It's divided into sections; first you have to decide what your character is like, what form it will take, literally! 🔶🔴🔻🔲

I can say that the standard for the shape of each part is:

Face: a box, something square or rectangular

Eyes: Trapeze and Hexagon

Nose: triangle

You can add your own touch with makeup, scars, ethnicities, nationalities, weight, and proportions.

Remember: it doesn't have to be perfect; as artists we learn, create, and change.

3d printing had the potential to change so much about how everyday people interact with stuff. I mean stuff like a technical term, items, things, whatever. The ability to make whatever, rapid prototyping, fabricate spare parts, etc. It could have changed so much. People are used to buying a thing, using it, and replacing it when it breaks. Nobody knows how to do preventative maintenance, and no one knows how to fix anything. If you can make spare parts in your own house in a matter of hours, it puts so much power back in your hands

But a majority of the people who got into 3d printing are also the kind of people to collect Funko Pops and the culture around it became much more focused on gadgetry. Most people's interactions with 3d printing now are fidget toys and those stupid 3d printable dragons you see at every convention. It's mass produced boring plastic slop.

Honestly I think the people closest to using 3d printing to its full potential are the 3d printable firearms enthusiasts. That's the tip of the spear when it comes to putting the power of fabrication back in the hands of people. And of course there's legislators trying to get eyes in every 3d printer to somehow detect if the thing you're making is a gun. Which won't ever work, there will likely always be some way around it, even if it's just building your own printer. It would hamper the more casual hobbyist from getting into it and force anyone participating to be very paranoid about who they talk to about it. But the point of that isn't even guns. I don't think it's any wonder that this stuff is cropping up today, given that 3d printable whistles have been mass produced and distributed to be used against ICE. The point of that kind of legislation is to let the NSA look at what you're making. They don't care about guns, the guns are a cover story to get liberals to vote for it. The ability to near-autonomously print off hundreds of something has the potential for a revolution of thought and action on par with the printing press of the 1400s. They want to know what you're making in case it's something you can use against them. Whistles, guns, whatever.

For one thing, my critique of the makerspace cultural vibe would NOT be that people were too into funko-pop-ism but rather that people were constantly trying to sell this idealism of 'you could make anything!!!' without really either having or teaching the skillset of figuring out *how* to take a project from concept to completion. Or how to identify the technical skills you'd need and aquire them.

Which is notable because I also have been to a lot of community art spaces that are WAY better at this! I mean those are hit and miss also. But there's at least one I can think of where if you turn up being like 'hi I want to make a giant wearable sculpture of a bug and I haven't made anything like that ever' they will Make That Happen. Like: heres how you sketch an idea, here's practical questions to address, here's materials we have on hand as construction options, heres people who will show you how to work with those materials.

And like. Hypothetically there could be / could have been maker spaces like that. But in my experience they were all like 'Wow look at our cool printers!!! You can make anything!!1!' And they'd have like. A basic checkout process for How To Use the printer or the laser cutter or whatever. But beyond 'you feed a file into it and it does the thing' you were on your own?

And that is pretty much why most people never made it past 'print some cool thing I found on thingiverse' hence fidget spinners and little articulated animals and whatnot.

AND THEN ALSO I spent some time in engineering college circles where there are a bunch of people around who know how to 3D model (actually kind of an annoying skillset to aquire tbh. But that's another can of worms.) And also had a very 'we can fix things, we can interface with reality' mindset so there would be like, the broken button on the drinking fountain in the mech e building had a 3D printed part repairing it and so on.

But even then it never became a huge part of the landscape. Because the OTHER thing you realize when you get this far into it is that 3D printed objects kind of suck. ESPECIALLY the makerspace lowest common denominator 'PLA extrusion printer' output. It's not only a piece of plastic shit, it's actually *worse* quality than the previous quality benchmark for cheap plastic (injection molding). It's made of thin layers of a plastic that is both soft and brittle. The layer adhesion is iffy and even when good it's not strong. The surface is ridged and trying to smooth it is futile because it just scratches and gets rough and nasty. And that's once you get *past* having to redo the first layer three times and watch it like a hawk because if the base layer doesn't stick evenly to the platform the whole print is screwed and you get a nasty lump of plastic that isn't even the right shape.

And yeah there are other 3D print technologies! There's other plastics and other deposition tactics and even metal printing and etc etc. But all of those are ALSO more fiddly in the details than you might think, in ways that limit their application or make them impractical for casual use. And fundamentally they all still have layer boundary issues because that is the Whole Gimmick of 3D printing. That you are making it in layers.

If you want to get around that you can do CNC milling or make molds or any number of other things. (Lost wax casting is an ancient technique! You can do it in your kitchen probably!) But everything has its process specifications and limitations.

If I had to put my finger on one thing that I think went wrong with makerspace culture, it would be the mass misimpression that 3D printing was somehow a way AROUND the issue of process. That it was a way to transmit concepts directly into reality without having to know how to do anything to make that happen. And the way people kept trying to sell each other on this idea, actively impeded the development of a collective knowledgebase for how to use the actual process of 3D printing effectively.

To which the 3D printed gun thing is an interesting exception! People worked on that for years. And for a long time, I assumed they would fail, because of the whole thing where 3D printed plastic parts are shit. But they succeeded! It is a solved problem, there is now a whole technique for printing guns! I don't know much about it, other than it took a lot of troubleshooting on the basic end of getting the material quality of the parts to hold up to what was needed. So again: becoming expert in this specific fabrication process and its foibles.

As far as I know, this happened with guns for a specific combination of reasons: regulation of the production of guns and gun parts, and the discreteness of 3D printing. You can make your own 3D printer, no one even necessarily knows that you have it. Nothing about the printer itself is incriminating of the fact that you made gun parts on it (except the print files). There's almost certainly other fabrication processes that would be much more suited to making guns, but they don't offer the degree of secrecy and obfuscation 3D printing does. Because people were very invested in the project of coming up with an untraceable way to make guns, they solved the not-insignificant material quality problems 3D printing presents, for their use case.

The only other use in which 3D printing has really persisted, to my knowledge, is rapid prototyping - in the sense of being able to quickly make mockups of objects you've 3D modeled and see how they are as physical shapes (made of shitty plastic). You have to be Pretty Damn Good at 3D modeling for this to be more worth your time than like, making a papier-mache mockup over a tape-and-newspaper core. Or making it out of cut paper, or wire, or something.

My point is, I think there absolutely is a hunger to learn how to make things and maintain things, and design and modify things. And makerspaces as a cultural shtick came out of that hunger, but I think many of them got drawn off into Gadgets Of The Future! excitement and lost track of the basic necessary skillbuilding, which is first around learning how to analyze a problem or break down an idea into workable parts, and second of all about the techniques associated with any fabrication process.

I grew up in the Bay Area, went to Maker Faires, read this 2007 Cory Doctorow short story as a tween, etc

in 2017 I interned in a Bay Area library's teen-only makerspace which, I think, contains the only free-to-use 3D printers in a city of a million people. The teens were not particularly interested in them

I make a lot of things with my hands (ceramics, wood, metal, fabric)

I am the stepparent to a 3D printer I was intensely skeptical of

I think @screambirdscreaming's point about 3D printers being marketed as a quick fix/disruption, as opposed to a people-based movement, is completely accurate and also completely classic Silicon Valley

the other two thoughts I have:

3D printers are basically entirely removed from public life (siloed to students/$160-month makerspaces/specific nerds), and because of that, it's easy to miss that they now make 3D printers that are good. Like the layer lines on these prints are miniscule? If you haven't seen a recent 3D print: some of them are good now. I was very startled.

As mentioned in the original post: 3D printers are extremely useful for hyperspecific subcomponents, process improvements, and niche tools. Use cases: if you need a tiny jar to hold bolts. If you're putting up a rod to hang clothing from and don't want to go to the store to buy pole sockets. If you want to add a thread cutter to your old sewing machine. If you want to weave a ceramic basket exactly the size of a tube of toothpaste and need a rounded rectangle to gently lay your ceramic worms on.

If you need an extremely specific modified S-hook for the pot rack you are welding: 3D printer! I can't remember what filament type this was but it could hold three pots without deforming.

I fully agree that 3D modeling is finicky and lacks physical feedback. However: there are huge libraries of existing models AND many very simple objects exist that are no harder to draw than to model.

A 3D printer would never be my first choice to get someone into the practice of fixing and tweaking the built world around them. But 3D printers can make pretty good stuff that slots very well into a broader palette of tools and skills, and I would like it if they were more accessible.

I'm not really engaging with most of the first post because I think its conclusion is wrong. In my opinion, the situation is that they're expensive tools and there are no social services to connect people to them, not that people have bad funko pop vibes. Sorry OP <3

Edit: Found the section I bookmarked awhile back!

I spent the lion's share of my artistic career behind a desk doing The Business Sides of Art.

I am spending the rest of my life (I'm fine this is a statement of purpose not a harbinger) packing that up quietly and getting behind easels and drawing tables.

Coming at it from that angle

this color theory tutorial by @sabertoothwalrus

is