Useful Stuff and More

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.

mixer brush cloud painting mini tutorial

not a replacement for actual painting!!!

The number one reason I stop reading a story is because I just don’t care. I don’t care if your protagonist lives or dies. I don’t care about the stakes. I don’t even really understand who they are. I’m sure a lot of readers are like me in that way. They want to feel emotionally connected to the characters in some way. They want a reason to keep reading.

If you’re finding your protagonist isn’t that interesting or you don’t know how to improve the way you’re writing them, try these tips:

Start Right Away

Don’t make your readers wait to find something to care about. Get your message across as quickly as possible. Who is your protagonist? What do they want? What’s threatening what they want? There are subtle ways to let readers in on your protagonist’s life without giving away everything at once, so don’t info-dump. Most people will stop reading if there’s nothing something interesting happening within the first chapter. This doesn’t mean there needs to be tons of explosions and death—we just need to understand what the deal is.

Make the Stakes Reasonable

The stakes can’t be too low or too high. I know this sounds confusing, but it needs to be something the reader can fully grasp. The stakes should directly impact the protagonist in some way. In other words, readers aren’t going to care too much about your protagonist being 5 minutes late to work. They’re also going to have trouble caring about a fictional planet light-years away being destroyed. You need to give us a reason to care and have the stakes match the tone of the story.

Give us a Reason to Like Them

Protagonists need to be likeable in some way. I’m sure some writers would argue with me on that, but I need a reason to root for the main character. Sure, there’s such thing as an anti-hero, but they usually have some redeeming qualities. Let your readers know why your protagonist is a decent person. Do they have family they care about? Are they protecting something? Why should we like them? Take some time to focus on these questions.

But Don’t Make Them Too Good

Flaws are very important if you want readers to care about your protagonist. A “too perfect” protagonist is very annoying and won’t feel real. Give them some flaws that explain their sometimes less-than-perfect reactions to situations. Are they too quick to act? Are they sometimes a little selfish? Do they crave power in some way? No one in this world is flawless, so your characters shouldn’t be either.

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.

bruh

But yeah, it’s a WYSIWYG with a really straight-forward GUI, if I remember correctly.

It even comes with some free backgrounds and characters and stuff, and this is what it looks like:

Did I mention it’s super duper free? It hasn’t been updated since 2010, but it has basically all you’d need to make a simple visual novel.

Now first, I have to say, that the plot you’re able to come up with in one day is not going to be without its flaws, but coming up with it all at once, the entire story unfolds right in front of you and makes you want to keep going with it. So, where to begin?

What is your premise and basic plot? Pick your plot. I recommend just pulling one from this list. No plots are “original” so making yours interesting and complicated will easily distract from that fact, that and interesting characters. Characters will be something for you to work on another day, because this is plotting day. You’ll want the main plot to be fairly straight forward, because a confusing main plot will doom you if you want subplots.

Decide who the characters will be. They don’t have to have names at this point. You don’t even need to know who they are other than why they have to be in the story. The more characters there are the more complicated the plot will be. If you intend to have more than one subplot, then you’ll want more characters. Multiple interconnected subplots will give the illusion that the story is very complicated and will give the reader a lot of different things to look at at all times. It also gives you the chance to develop many side characters. The plot I worked out yesterday had 13 characters, all were necessary. Decide their “roles” don’t bother with much else. This seems shallow, but this is plot. Plot is shallow.

Now, decide what drives each character. Why specifically are they in this story? You can make this up. You don’t even know these characters yet. Just so long as everyone has their own motivations, you’re in the clear.

What aren’t these characters giving away right off the bat? Give them a secret! It doesn’t have to be something that they are actively lying about or trying to hide, just find something that perhaps ties them into the plot or subplot. This is a moment to dig into subplot. This does not need to be at all connected to their drive to be present in the story.  Decide who is in love with who, what did this person do in the 70’s that’s coming back to bite them today, and what continues to haunt what-his-face to this very day. This is where you start to see the characters take shape. Don’t worry much about who they are or what they look like, just focus on what they’re doing to the story.

What is going to change these characters? Now this will take some thinking. Everyone wants at least a few of the characters to come out changed by the end of the story, so think, how will they be different as a result of the plot/subplot? It might not be plot that changes them, but if you have a lot of characters, a few changes that are worked into the bones of the plot might help you.

Now list out the major events of the novel with subplot in chronological order. This will be your timeline. Especially list the historical things that you want to exist in backstory. List everything you can think of. Think about where the story is going. At this point, you likely haven’t focused too much on the main plot, yeah, it’s there, but now really focus on the rising actions, how this main plot builds its conflict, then the climactic moment. Make sure you get all of that in there. This might take a few hours.

Decide where to start writing. This part will take a LOT of thinking. It’s hard! But now that you’ve got the timeline, pick an interesting point to begin at. Something with action. Something relevant. Preferably not at the beginning of your timeline - you want to have huge reveals later on where these important things that happened prior are exposed. This is the point where you think about what information should come out when. This will be a revision of your last list, except instead of being chronological, it exists to build tension.

Once you’ve gotten the second list done, you’ve got a plot. Does it need work? Probably. But with that said, at this point you probably have no idea who half your characters are. Save that for tomorrow, that too will be a lot of work.

Yeah! here are some tips on drawing fabric and clothing that I sent to a friend a while back:

You know those characters that are constantly referred to so smart or so capable or so sensitive (etc. etc.) by other characters or in the narration? And every time it comes up you find yourself shaking your head or rolling your eyes because the character in question  either is as bland as boiled potatoes or constantly acts in ways that contradict those claims without explanation? 

That’s what is commonly called an “informed trait”. You’re told the character is a certain way (or has a certain ability), but there is more or less nothing in the text to back that up. 

It goes the other way around, too, with informed flaws that are supposed to make a character more relatable or interesting - think almost every romantic comedy leading lady who is supposedly “shy” and “clumsy”, but in a cute, endearing way that only ever comes up when the plot asks for it. 

It’s frustrating, distracting, incredibly dull and at times downright insulting to the reader to encounter a story where one or more characters have a bad case of this, but unfortunately, it’s a pretty common weakness even in otherwise strong, well-written stories with interesting and complex character concepts. 

Since characters and how the reader feels about them (whether they are supposed to relate to them, look up to them or feel repulsed by them) can really make or break a story, informed traits are an easy trap to fall into and many a writer’s Achilles heel. 

So, how to avoid them?

This is where the trusty old “Show, don’t tell” comes in. You have most likely been told before that it’s usually better to go for subtlety and leave something to the reader’s imagination than to spell it out, and that is true. 

It’s challenging to imply something without outright saying it. You have to get creative with the details you want to put into your story to get a point across by relying on your audience’s ability to read between the lines, and while it’s absolutely worth it to go the extra mile, you also run the risk of making your narrative too stilted and contrived instead. 

However, there is a fairly simple trick to make your characterization feel more natural and insert it into the story smoothly:

Stop thinking of your characters as possessing certain traits and start thinking of their personalities as a collection of habits, preferences and specific abilities. 

It might not sound like that big of a difference, but it will make translating your character traits into text much, much easier and save you a lot of trouble while editing. 

Some examples:

 A “smart” character This can mean a lot of things. You could have a character who is booksmart, learns quickly, reads a lot, can retain information easily and access it when needed, but has trouble applying theoretical knowledge in real life, someone who entertains their friends by telling them about weird facts and trivia, someone who can still recite poems they had to learn by heart when they were ten, someone with a tendency to talk in such complex run-on sentences they frequently forget what they were talking about half-way through.  Or you could have a character who is good at problem-solving instead, who likes puzzles and riddles, who gleefully obsesses over odd problems to find even odder solutions, but thinks so far out of the box in order to remain engaged in their current task they often miss the forest for the trees.  

A “brave” character Try to instead make a character who can never resist a challenge, who is a thrill-seeker and went bungee jumping about a dozen times already, who enjoys dragging their friends on the most dangerous looking rides in an amusement park and endlessly teases them about how pale they went afterwards. Make someone who simply cannot stand by when they see someone else get bullied, someone with a collection of scars they wear proudly and a story to tell about each one.   

A “shy” character Forget about characters who blush prettily when spoken to and that’s it. Instead, write about a character who can’t make eye contact without forcing themselves to, who stumbles over their own words when talking to strangers, who is afraid of wearing bright colours because it might draw attention to them, someone who is humble and polite, but distant and comes across as cold or uncaring because they have tendency to hide their insecurity by retreating into themselves, even though seeming rude is the last thing on their mind.

(part one is here: http://helpfulharrie.tumblr.com/post/163022326146/)

now for the bit which really confused me for a long time - uv mapping and editing

thats how you actually colour your model, like so

first off, this video was very helpful to me!!

but there was still a few things which confused me because its very fast, so im just going to go through what ive learnt here. maybe watch the video first, or maybe watch it after? idk up to you.

anyway before you start assign anything to your model you wanna go to edit > delete by type > history

what this does is like every time you edit your model like by extruding or transforming it, you’ll get like a new tab here

when you delete by history it’ll clear those away for you!

anyway the reason you’re doing this is bc you want to add a new material to your model.

to do that make sure your model is selected in object mode, then right click on it and go to assign new material (or favourite material)

which one you use depends on what effect you are after.

lambert will give you that smooth shading - its the default shader! im personally using the surface shader at the moment cause its like completely flat? and i like the way that looks.

if you use the surface shader you’ll end up with a completely blank model,

but thats ok you’ll b putting a texture on it.

anyway, experiment w these !! i mean i am lmAO. you can like google them for more info

anyway the next step depends on what youre going to Do with your model, texture wise.

the regular way is to map things & then paint out your textures like this so they follow the uv shells

(this is a wip sorry, but you get the idea!)

& you can also just make some simple flat textures for small things.

this method is very simple so i’ll explain that first!

Hey friends!

Meg here for this weeks TUTOR TUESDAY! This is part one of two, where we’ll be studying expressions. Today we’re going to just take a peek at mouths and how they work!

https://paintschainer.preferred.tech/ here