Questions, Discussion, Tutorials

robo-bee · January 2012

I have questions about art supplies. For the sake of background, I'm in my late twenties with zero art experience, and would currently classify myself as a beginner and a hobbyist. In terms of style, I'm leaning in the direction of cartooning. Currently I'm using a set of sketching pencils (4b - 4h), and two micron pens (1mm and .5mm). Basically my questions are:
1 - Are the micron pens a good choice for basic line work? I don't really do any legitimate inking at present - just basic outlining.
2 - I'd like try experimenting with color, particularly markers, but I'm not sure what would be a good starter product. I've read a lot about copic markers, but they're way out of my price range.
Any product recommendations would be really helpful.

rts · January 2012

I would probably drop the 4h-4b pencils and just get a mechanical. Even in my fine art work I find little reason to use any other pencils for graphite work. It may take a little longer to develop the dexterity and pressure sensitivity required to draw well with just the one pencil, but it will be very beneficial in the long run in the convenience department. I don't think there is anything wrong with the microns for casual inking.

Infidel · January 2012

The rules thread says post these in CHAT or here so I hope it is fine that I crosspost it for those who don't keep up on CHAT.

Infidel wrote:

CASH MONEY JOB ALERT (just to get that out of the way)

Hi AC,

I will in the near future be needing the talents of an artist for concepts and finished assets for an indie iOS game. The team is comprised of Penny Arcade community folks and I am looking to keep it that way as much as possible.

Without getting into the details yet, the job will encompass the creation and release of a free demo app. The final game will be built upon many minigames, and the scope here is just one selected minigame. It will be fine if this is just a one-off thing but the option will be there for more work down the line when the full game is underway.

The theme is a scifi / transhuman one and the art style is in between gritty and cartoony. I don't really have an exact level for that yet because it is something you and the team would work on first so it will probably take a good bit from your own style. The gameplay is puzzle, sometimes with a bit of action. Assets needed would be titles, UI elements, unit sprites/models, basic top-down scenes, and lots of miscellaneous stuff I should just stop trying to list them. It is an open issue whether the engine will be 2D or top-down 3D, the gameplay is board-based so 2D vs 3D assets is an art direction and engine decision. Even if we go 3D and you are not modeller we may be interested in your work for concepts and UI elements.

Not sure what else to solicit here, just PM me and we can discuss more details. This is a project I am funding personally so it's not the hugest of budgets but I know to save most of it for artists. I'm the programmer/audio-dude/co-designer and the project lead. If you are interested, PM me saying as much and please link any work or portfolios you have. Previous experience delivering video game and/or mobile assets is :^:, and the first artist contracted will be comfortable with working with the writer on visualizing concepts.

If you think I should add any other info here, let me know.

Thanks.

Nappuccino · January 2012

tynic wrote:

no it's fine to save as psd in gimp, although if you're using layer effects (screen, etc) sometimes they don't map exactly to the photoshop options. But tif or eps is easier unless you want the printer to be able to mess with the layers.

Thanks Cake and Tynic, Saving it as a PS image did the trick. And now I've got a bunch of snazzy business cards to hand out.

Mai-Kero · February 2012

I just picked up a medium Intuos4. Any neat tutorials I should look up to make the most of it?

squidbunny · February 2012

Any of you guys do custom fonts or interested in doing custom fonts?

Edit: I'm not looking for someone to pester with pro bono requests. I'm looking for someone to pay a sack of cash in the future for a really specific font because I'm sort of abysmal at type design.

Evil Multifarious · February 2012

There are a lot of resources and good advice here on practical theory, like how to develop your sense of form and light/shadow, values, anatomy, etc., but I have yet to find a good tutorial on some technical basics, like how one uses a pencil or various pencils to achieve those things. Is there anything anyone could recommend that would give me some good info on how to properly cross hatch, achieve a gradual soft shading, and so on, with pencil?

I have a Motion LE1600 for digital art, but I'm finding it extremely difficult to move beyond the cartoony, line-intensive, flat-value art that I've always made when working digitally, and I think working in a physical medium would be a lot more productive on that front.

rts · February 2012

My advice on cross-hatching is don't do it. It looks bad. You won't realize it until a ways down the road but there is almost zero situation in which it looks good. Achieving a gradual soft shading just requires practice...it's just a dexterity issue. What I would do, is hold your pencil at the back of the pencil and slowly drag it up and down across the area you are trying to fill with value. Cover the area with this light value and then start the process over pressing a little harder.

There is nothing wrong with digital for working with value, in fact it's a much more ideal tool. The problem you have here is mindset, not tools....sometimes changing medium can help mindset...but I would be careful thinking it's going to work miracles.

Evil Multifarious · February 2012

cakemikz wrote:

My advice on cross-hatching is don't do it. It looks bad. You won't realize it until a ways down the road but there is almost zero situation in which it looks good. Achieving a gradual soft shading just requires practice...it's just a dexterity issue. What I would do, is hold your pencil at the back of the pencil and slowly drag it up and down across the area you are trying to fill with value. Cover the area with this light value and then start the process over pressing a little harder.

There is nothing wrong with digital for working with value, in fact it's a much more ideal tool. The problem you have here is mindset, not tools....sometimes changing medium can help mindset...but I would be careful thinking it's going to work miracles.

I dunno, hatching to create a sense of form seems to be pretty aesthetically and developmentally valid - by which I mean that understanding the effects of diverging/converging/parallel/intersecting lines and how they create value seems like it would be helpful when you move on to painting and also start thinking about composition. But I am no expert!

It can also be a shortcut, I suppose; i think something like this looks good, probably with a lot less effort/time than smooth/textured shading with the same tools, but doing the latter would probably be an improvement.

My main problem with digital, i think, is the feeling of constriction because of the menus and bars and poor sensitivity on the edges of an already-small screen. I already have trouble not drawing cramped, small figures when working in any medium.

m3nace · February 2012

The example you posted looks horrible to me. For an example on great cross hatching I'd have you look at some of Rembrandt's prints instead because prints are cases of the need for cross hatching.

rts · February 2012

You really aim for the stars don't you? This drawing is...not impressive.

Here is an impressive drawing. Notice the zero cross-hatching. By all means work traditionally. I am not actually known on this forum for promoting digital believe it or not. But I think your reasons for not using it are more an extension of your mindset than a problem with the actual tool.

Angel_of_Bacon · February 2012

@EvilM: I'm going to third the notion that that is a terrible example in support of cross-hatching.

I won't go so far as Cake in saying it's completely worthless, but I will say that making it look good is by no means going to be a shortcut- if anything, doing it well is even harder than a purely tonal approach.

(Conversational tangent incoming)

An example of good use of hatching principles (it's got some tonal work in there as well so it's not a perfect example, but): http://bacon.iseenothing.com/otherpeoplestuff/greuze.jpg

But the thing is, drawing like that is pretty much as, if not more, difficult than drawing purely tonally with charcoal or digitally- and both require the same mastery of light and shade and tone and form etc.

The problem with cross hatching is it gets a bad rap because of examples like yours- stroke directions chosen at random, not following the form, parallel strokes flattening the form pointlessly, strokes criss-crossing each other in weird flat waffle patterns- generally just making a mess of things. This is what happens when people who don't have a lot of understanding of form try to cross-hatch, and it looks terrible. High school students hear the term "cross-hatching" as a piece of fancy sounding art vocabulary and try to do it, without understanding all the knowledge involved in doing it effectively. (Which is why that picture would still be pretty bad even if it was ultra-airbrush smooth.)

Compare that to the Greuze example- every individual stroke is there for a purpose, describing the form and tone in a very graceful way- like a sculptor using a rake tool to carve out a face from clay. There's no shortcut involved in doing that, because drawing like that is extraordinarily difficult.

But then, any method that ends up with a good looking result tends to be very difficult (drawing is hard, no joke), so if you're going to do something you should at least aim for something you actually want to eventually draw like, rather than pick techniques based on whether you think they'll be easy or not.

rts · February 2012

And at the end of the day, for all your hard work you have an exceptionally mediocre looking drawing.

The_Glad_Hatter · February 2012

I just can't walk by any discussion on crosshatching without mentioning Franquin, the king of crosshatching (spirou et fantasia, marsupilami, Gaston).
Here and Here.

Altough it is pretty irrelevant in this discussion since he asked for soft graduations. Perhaps study the Rembrandt etchings. We had to copy a few in college to get a feel for expressive crosshatching. There are some great books with just these etchings in them, perfect for copying. I disagree with Cake that no crosshatched drawing can "live up" to a painterly work (if i interpret you correctly). Different medium, different strengths.

rts · February 2012

That isn't cross-hatching. That is just controlled chaos. I 'cross-hatch' in my own work all the time if this is how you want to define it. Having lines crossing each other though doesn't really seem like all that complex a definition.

Clement Coll is one of my favorite artists, and he bounces back and forth between using cross-hatching and not, and it doesn't bother me in the slightest. But that's because the cross-hatching is irrelevant to his artwork, just like in the links you posted. It's not his approach, it's just something he happened to do on the way to a final product.

Everyone around here seems so caught up in the technical aspects of drawing... when it doesn't friggin matter at all. It's like asking a painter for every specific color on his palette, or his brush brand and size and shape. I guess all of these things help? But they are not what makes the painter. And cross-hatching is one of these tools that becomes so damn distracting while you use it that most people totally forget they are supposed to be producing something that looks nice at all. You are better off leaving it at home and working in just about any other way.

The_Glad_Hatter · February 2012

Okay, i understand what you mean now. You're talking about how the basics of the drawing are forgotten by just staring at the crosshatching and i totally agree. Some charcoal or digital stuff would probably be an easier path to doing great "crosshatching" stuff since it allows you to pick up the value skills first.

Altough i fail to see how the examples i posted aren't really crosshatching. Or is the word crosshatching used only for straight intersecting lines in english?

squidbunny · February 2012

Do any of you have super fav videos/tutorials/whatever specifically focused on landscape painting and/or environment design?

Mangoes · February 2012

Feng Zhu has a lot of cool videos on environmental stuff. They're not great in the super-detailed-tutorial department, but they're really inspirational and somewhat insightful for where to start.

squidbunny · February 2012

Oh, yeah. These are perfect!

Siegfried · February 2012

Does anyone know what the dimensions are for the new Facebook "cover photos?" I saw Firman make a cool one and I kind of want to jump on that as well.

MagicToaster · February 2012

I can't do it on my iPad, but why not take a print screen and measure it in photoshop?

Siegfried · February 2012

Well he replied, and it's 960px by 355px

Less work for me MT!! Duh!

Beltaine · February 2012

Are "Right Side of the Brain" and/or "Natural Way" still considered the go-to for working on basics/fundamentals, or is there something new(er)/better out there now?

I want to eventually be doing oil paintings, but I've got to work on some basic drawing skills first, I think.

NibCrom · February 2012

Mai-Kero wrote:

I just picked up a medium Intuos4. Any neat tutorials I should look up to make the most of it?

I didn't see anyone else reply, and I don't have any tutorials, but my advice is to practice practice practice and to draw BIG. I scan in my pencil drawings at 600 dpi and usually draw at 100%. Sometimes I'll zoom in to 200% as well. It's much easier for me to get smooth lines this way.

m3nace · February 2012

You guys, any tips for picking a palette? Do you always use reference when choosing colors or do you have some tricks up your sleeves? Magic?

square · February 2012

m3nace wrote:

You guys, any tips for picking a palette? Do you always use reference when choosing colors or do you have some tricks up your sleeves? Magic?

this would help me as well. Many thanks in advance

Siegfried · February 2012

square wrote:

m3nace wrote:

You guys, any tips for picking a palette? Do you always use reference when choosing colors or do you have some tricks up your sleeves? Magic?

this would help me as well. Many thanks in advance

I use this to the point that I am practically retarded without it.

But I'll get over it eventually: http://colorschemedesigner.com/

square · February 2012

I have

Siegfried wrote:

square wrote:

m3nace wrote:

You guys, any tips for picking a palette? Do you always use reference when choosing colors or do you have some tricks up your sleeves? Magic?

this would help me as well. Many thanks in advance

I use this to the point that I am practically retarded without it.

But I'll get over it eventually: http://colorschemedesigner.com/

I have this little ps plug-in called adobe kuler but I don't like it. I'll give that site a try. Thank you for sharing

Golem · February 2012

So I'm fairly new in this area, was hoping to get some tips. I have a small tablet seems to be a 5" x 8" and a copy of Adobe CS5. What I'm wondering is any tips on transitioning from pencil and paper to CS5. The disconnect for me between stylus and screen seems...very dis-jaunting.

The_Glad_Hatter · February 2012

m3nace wrote:

You guys, any tips for picking a palette? Do you always use reference when choosing colors or do you have some tricks up your sleeves? Magic?

You can go all Gurney and try Gamut masking.

NibCrom · February 2012

Golem wrote:

So I'm fairly new in this area, was hoping to get some tips. I have a small tablet seems to be a 5" x 8" and a copy of Adobe CS5. What I'm wondering is any tips on transitioning from pencil and paper to CS5. The disconnect for me between stylus and screen seems...very dis-jaunting.

I'm assuming you're talking about Photoshop? Practice over long periods of time helps. Tracing over pencil drawings helps. Draw big and zoom in if you need to. It's much easier to make smooth lines.

m3nace · February 2012

Woah great find hatter!

The_Glad_Hatter · February 2012

m3nace wrote:

Woah great find hatter!

I'm reading his book at the moment and it is really great. The blog is a bit of an extension of the books. one of the few sites on my daily blog bookmark.
I mailed him a couple of times with questions or relevant links, and he even took the time to reply!

rts · February 2012

He's a pretty cool guy. At the 2010 Illustration Master Class I got to have breakfast with him and his wife pretty much every morning for a week because I was the only student who seemed to get up as early as he did. Definitely pick up both of his books if you can, they are by far two of the best instructional art books available.

Mustang · February 2012

squidbunny wrote:

Guys I'm trying to get my Intuos3 working on a laptop with Windows 7. I know the Intuos drivers are notoriously bullshit with Win7 but I'm not having the usual problems with pressure sensitivity and the driver not starting with the the computer, etc., etc.. Instead, I just can't get the tablet buttons working for right-click, double-click and whatnot. I've already tried disabling all Windows' goofy Tablet PC services as suggested by search results (& which helped in that it got rid of that ridiculous ripply circle business) but the clicks still aren't working. Thoughts?

The intuos 3 and windows 7 seem destined to never get along. I'm having an issue at the moment where the pen pressure sensitivity is randomly ignored by PS cs5. So I'll be going about my business and then all of a sudden I get a fat ass line at full opacity. It's driving me fucking nuts, I've tried latest drivers, removing the tablet and re-adding it. My next option is to try 6.15 which Wacom recommend as the most stable driver for the intuos 3.

Obilex · February 2012

I have a question about these shirt designs and the legality of them. I think certain things are okay to print and sell if they are made in parody, but other stuff like, making a snoopy shirt and selling it is a no go. I really have zero experience in this and don't want to get hauled off to jail for trying to sell these.

They are homages to the unsung heroes of the zerg in Starcraft. The first looks like an overlord to anyone who plays, but moms think it's a skull or something.

I used most of the negative space, trying to not have the designs be flat out drawings of an overlord and overseer.

You guys think I'll be okay or what?

rts · February 2012

First, awesome because the overlord and overseer are my two favorite units. I use overlord for my character portrait. Second, I don't think it matters. A ton of people print shirts with starcraft inspired designs on them. I really don't think these are close enough to justify a real issue.

As a critique of your designs though, I wouldn't buy a shirt like these though it's probably just my personal preference. It's just too much chaos and it can actually be a bit hard to tell what they are/whats going on...and it tends to be 10x harder to tell what something is when its wrapped around my fat jiggling gut.

Siegfried · February 2012

I think since its "inspired" its definitely okay to make and sell. Just don't use any Blizzard or Starcraft logos and you should be in the clear.

Godfather · February 2012

I need help guys!

Recently I've started using my Intuos 3 tablet, but for some reason or another photoshop refuses to recognize pen pressure sensitivity! The tablet "works" in a sense, but I recently discovered its stuck in mouse mode, and I can't figure out how to change it!

I tried looking up my tablet settings on my PC, but it doesn't give me an option (or even show) where I can change from mouse to pen pressure!

Please help!

Nic · February 2012

Is it an issue with the driver software? I know when I first installed my Bamboo one it didn't work right until I went to the website and got the latest driver. And then it didn't work right until I reset the computer.

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