Art Tips Thread II

[Vyrien]

My apologies if this is the wrong area to for this but can I ask a question about something digital related?

My understanding is; as long as it's about art, you're in the correct place. Go ahead.

[Colticide]

I'm trying to come up with a Banner of sorts using Kanji, but I'm not very sure on how to go about either making the Kanji not look plain or if there is a stylized font I can use. Any tips?

[Teewee]

Edit: Nvm, figured out the solution. ^^;

[HakureiSM]

I'm trying to come up with a Banner of sorts using Kanji, but I'm not very sure on how to go about either making the Kanji not look plain or if there is a stylized font I can use. Any tips?

You could probably look around for real banners or other stuff with Japanese writing on it until you find one that gives you inspiration.
I know dickall about oriental fonts, though

[Delfigamer]

How not to feel bad when seeing that what you're drawing is shit? That's not motivating at all. :/
And by "how not to" I mean "any other way besides 'just come and don't'", if there exists any.

[pasu]

How not to feel bad when seeing that what you're drawing is shit? That's not motivating at all. :/
And by "how not to" I mean "any other way besides 'just come and don't'", if there exists any.

You go off and cry and whine about an artblock


Then go and find something that you really want to draw instead of forcing yourself to

[Mеа]

How not to feel bad when seeing that what you're drawing is shit? That's not motivating at all. :/
And by "how not to" I mean "any other way besides 'just come and don't'", if there exists any.

pasu mentioned something about art block, which reminds me of this:

?Writer?s block is a gift from God.? ? OSC

Writer?s block is not when you look at the words and they seem stupid.

It?s not a disease, it?s a blessing. Either you just wrote or are about to write something you just don?t believe in. Go back and start asking yourself what else could happen. Find something you believe in.

You don?t write your way out; you invent your way out. You end up with more story.

Writer's block, artist's block, same difference. (Thank you, Orson Scott Card, I love your books)
I absolutely hate art block, it sucks. It's like I'm trapped in this mucky pit of holy-crap-I-can't-draw-for-shit. But you invent your way out. Innovate, try new styles and make your own. Looking back, it's times like these when I draw the most, improve the most, and change the most.
I used this article in an essay I had to write last quarter, I found it very interesting and helpful.

I totally understand what you mean though. Like a while ago, I was drawing something from touhou and was using Google Images as a reference, and whenever I would flip back to SAI I would feel a wave of discouragement from how crap my drawing looked.
My general routine is to keep making tons (pages) of different sketches of that-one-thing that I'm feeling art-blocky about, and just keep changing things up, looking up inspiration, then changing things up again over and over and over again until I finally stumble upon something that feels the most right out of what I've been doing. Then I start doing variations of that change over and over, such as drawing different characters in that new style.

[Teewee]

How not to feel bad when seeing that what you're drawing is shit? That's not motivating at all. :/
And by "how not to" I mean "any other way besides 'just come and don't'", if there exists any.

You could try to get together with others who're looking to improve their skills; as you go about your stuff with the group (sharing results amongst yourselves, arranging get-togethers, etc), your skills will improve, and eventually you'll stop seeing your works as shit.

Hope it helps!

[Colticide]

Well I fixed my own problem, I played around with Gimp and pasted the Kanji I need and sure enough with my default font pasted it in Kanji. That actually went well for something I never thought would work, so sorry for troubling everyone.

[KrackoCloud]

Delfi, I personally don't see your situation as a necessarily bad thing. If you can see problems in your drawings, you know what to improve on - honestly a lot more constructive than when people finish a drawing and think themselves great.

I can't say my words hold much weight considering I'm not a queen of Art Atelier or anything, but instead of focusing on getting motivated, why not just focus on being disciplined? Willpower trumps emotional energy - otherwise, there wouldn't be all those people who get excited about going for some new project or learning something new, only to give up a few weeks later. But a person who knows how to just power through when it's not rewarding seems to be the person who actually ends up getting rewarded.

[Delfigamer]

But I won't improve if I don't draw. :fail:

Tidal, well, I sorta have a thread for this kind of things and sometimes even post something there, stuff that doesn't look too hopeless (or wasn't intended to be good from the very beginning, which is usually just :colonveeplusalpha:).
Seems there's no way besides "just sit and draw" after all. Gonna get some chocolates then, I guess, and continue to attempt to draw classmates from photos more often that 0.5 tries/month. ._.

[Kitten4u]

I went through something similar a few months ago, so I suppose I can offer my two cents.  Eventually there will be something you really want to draw and it'll make you feel better, but until then drawing is really going to suck.  There are two things I found effective at keeping me drawing while everything sucked.

1.) Pick one technical aspect that you want to work on (for me it was facial anatomy and expressions) and do it repeatedly.  A good time to work on those technical aspects is when you're not feeling inspired because then you can focus on all the boring parts then and focus on the more fun parts when you're feeling it.

2.) Do something you just find relaxing (for me it was coloring other peoples' lineart).  This could be scribbling nonsense if there's no relaxing part of art for you yet.  It's just a good way to wind down and relax and will still keep you drawing *something*

But yes, in the end it's difficult to get over if you stop drawing completely.  Keep at it though, I'm sure the thing you really want to draw will come to you.

[Teewee]

Delfi, an art topic is a start, but further collaborating (like making a group) would be more effective.

Also, I never said to stop drawing.

2.) Do something you just find relaxing (for me it was coloring other peoples' lineart).  This could be scribbling nonsense if there's no relaxing part of art for you yet.  It's just a good way to wind down and relax and will still keep you drawing *something*

But yes, in the end it's difficult to get over if you stop drawing completely.  Keep at it though, I'm sure the thing you really want to draw will come to you.

Also, this.

[NanoSatellite]

But I won't improve if I don't draw. :fail:

Tidal, well, I sorta have a thread for this kind of things and sometimes even post something there, stuff that doesn't look too hopeless (or wasn't intended to be good from the very beginning, which is usually just :colonveeplusalpha:).
Seems there's no way besides "just sit and draw" after all. Gonna get some chocolates then, I guess, and continue to attempt to draw classmates from photos more often that 0.5 tries/month. ._.

Forming a group might be a fun idea.  Drawing has been a lonely experience for me so far.

[Mеа]

I'm trying to come up with a Banner of sorts using Kanji, but I'm not very sure on how to go about either making the Kanji not look plain or if there is a stylized font I can use. Any tips?

Luckily for you, I recently had to do a bit of searching myself for one of my classes. Here is a pretty useful list of some Japanese font (naturally, this includes kanji), simply install them after downloading.
If you need more, just search around google for japanese kanji font. Considering that there's like a million kanji, I don't expect there to be too many options like English has.

Edit: If you want to narrow your search, I found another site here which has the names of some Japanese fonts. There's a nice kanji preview of the fonts too.

[Teewee]

So, I've been progressing through Loomis' Figure Drawing For all It's Worth, and I'm near the point where I have to work from this page. Problem is, that it has quite a bit of skeleton foreshortening that I wasn't taught in any parts prior to that page, or anywhere else for that matter.

What am I supposed to do, there?

[Kaze_Senshi]

Since you don't know foreshortening  maybe you can still work on this kind of expression exercise by training expressing emotions using the character's silhouette. For example you can shrug your shoulders to show lack of interest, raise your hands to show doubt about something or bend inside your knees to show weakness. Try to note how these skeletons show a feeling of tragedy or struggle while you analyze their silhouette.

[Freeze-Ex]

So, I've been progressing through Loomis' Figure Drawing For all It's Worth, and I'm near the point where I have to work from this page. Problem is, that it has quite a bit of skeleton foreshortening that I wasn't taught in any parts prior to that page, or anywhere else for that matter.

What am I supposed to do, there?

hmmm if you want to only want improve your foreshortening skill
those drawing might not suit ur need since u are new to foreshortening
gesture drawing requires imagination of overlapping shapes and muscles
try to start with a simple mechanic
u can try observational drawing from a actual box
close carefully how the edge and the corner changes in shapes as you slowly rotate them
once you got the idea try to draw them out
but if you just want to do normal anatomy drawing then ignore watever i said and look for some model image on google XD

[NanoSatellite]

So, I've been progressing through Loomis' Figure Drawing For all It's Worth, and I'm near the point where I have to work from this page. Problem is, that it has quite a bit of skeleton foreshortening that I wasn't taught in any parts prior to that page, or anywhere else for that matter.

What am I supposed to do, there?

Feel free to disregard my advice to those who are more experienced here.  I drew this up pretty quickly, but follow the 3 intersections of the cylinder. http://i.imgur.com/uuGA0F7.png the first image each one is the same height.  the 2nd part is to show it is a circle (cylinder).  Then the third part is to show what happens to the 3 circles in the first image when rotating the cylinder into a perspective.

[Teewee]

Forgot to mention, but I do know basic foreshortening in terms of some shapes, but it's just applying it to figures and skeletons that confuses me. Hence my question.

@Kaze_Senshi: Can you show me some examples of that exercise being done? I don't quite get what you mean :/

@Freeze-Ex: I'll see what I can do with that. Thanks.

@NanoSatellite: I see what you mean.

[Teewee]

I've been trying to figure out how to draw the head tilted upwards as seen from the front, but i don't get how the jaw shape changes. I understand that features like the eyes, ears, and hairline are placed differently in relation to each other, but when I try to draw the jaw, I get something like this.

So, how does it work?

[Colticide]

Any good tips on how to begin on making your own sprites? I'm working on a project and I feel bad for using others work and would prefer to use what I make. If it would help it's gonna have Touhou characters so any tips on how to convert them easily over to custom sprites would be very helpful.

[Mеа]

Any good tips on how to begin on making your own sprites? I'm working on a project and I feel bad for using others work and would prefer to use what I make. If it would help it's gonna have Touhou characters so any tips on how to convert them easily over to custom sprites would be very helpful.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'convert them easily over to custom sprites'. If it's custom, I'm assuming you're either creating your own or modifying existing ones. Either way you would need an application, and two stand out:

Graphics Gale
Technically you there is a full version for $27, but I think the only useful feature the full version has that the free version doesn't is an export-as-gif feature. If you need gifs, you can always create them with other applications with the individually exported sprites, so this isn't a big deal. It looks and feels rather archaic, but it should fit the needs of any pixel artist/animator. I believe it's also the most used among spriters. It has a real-time animation preview window.

Aseprite
I haven't used this one as much as Graphics Gale, but it certainly looks nicer. This alone makes me want to test it out more, but I haven't fiddled with it much. It's also completely free. It doesn't feature gif exports as well, but again this shouldn't be a problem. From the little that I've played with it, it seems a bit harder to actually create and edit animations (as in frame by frame stuff, as the animation editor isn't just a separate window. It also doesn't have a real-time animation preview like GG does). I believe this is popular alternative to people who are put off by Graphics Gale's archaic-ness.

If you want tutorials and tips, then this guide has tons of useful information. The other guides on that site are very helpful as well.

If this is your very first attempt at sprite making, then I suggest just opening up MS Paint and playing around with the pencil tool just to get a feel for pixel drawing.

[Colticide]

I've been reading the sites tutorials but I'm still just stuck on where to start. I need to make RPG sprites for over world stuff and then character portraits and then battle portraits. I've been looking at ones I have from other sheets but no idea where to start.

Also on another note I've been working on a UI for a fan game. It's pretty easy until I ended up at this. The issue I have is since I like to stay authentic like this (Since it's tiny pic I'll add a NSFW here, odd results in the bottom), looking into the background of the second one the gradient goes one direction, sadly for the first one the gradient has two start points and goes into the center and I have no idea how to get it to look like that. I'd like to get this project finished this year since it's been so long since I started.

Also know any good image hosting sites?  I use to use Imageshack but now I can't use it for free anymore.

[Delfigamer]

I remember Puush, Imgur and Dropbox being recommended in GA thread.

[HakureiSM]

Yup, please don't use tinypic. It just plain doesn't work in some countries.

[Vyrien]

Voting puush here.

[Colticide]

OK, well should I re upload my images? Or am I out of luck here?

[pineyappled]

try puush

[Colticide]

OK so like I said above, this I need to change over to English, I have the text ready but the Issue is the gradient background.

The first one I did, this, is simple in that the gradient goes one direction, however the first one starts in two different spots and I can't get a good copy of the background to use. Any tips? I have tried to make my own but it looks no where similar.