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Questions, Discussion, and Tutorials

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Posts

  • NoodlesaladNoodlesalad Registered User regular
    edited April 2010
    also it is getting to be summer time, and computers overheat a lot faster when it is already warm inside.

    Noodlesalad on
  • nanthilnanthil Registered User regular
    edited April 2010
    Is one of those weekly competitions going on? I saw the noir topic, but that was almost 2 months ago.

    nanthil on
  • FlayFlay Registered User regular
    edited April 2010
    Can anyone recommend any good art blogs for me to follow? I seem to have been pretty low in the inspiration reserves for a while.

    Flay on
  • ksblairksblair Registered User regular
    edited April 2010
    I'm curious what peoples experience has been involving sketching with Tablets.

    Is there a clear cut winner between a capacitive and resistive touch screen in regards to sketching?

    What would your preference be and why?

    Thanks!

    ksblair on
  • mensch-o-maticmensch-o-matic Registered User regular
    edited April 2010
    wh-what happened to the brush set on the first page D:

    mensch-o-matic on
  • Stupid Mr Whoopsie NameStupid Mr Whoopsie Name Registered User, ClubPA regular
    edited April 2010
    Damn, I was just coming in to nick them myself, and this was my exact reaction!

    Stupid Mr Whoopsie Name on
  • Zato-1Zato-1 Registered User regular
    edited April 2010
    Seconded, me needs Ze Brushes ToO!

    Zato-1 on
    My Deviant Art: http://mosabali.deviantart.com
    Come say hi !
  • yoshideathyoshideath Registered User regular
    edited April 2010
    Now, I imagine I'm in the right place to be asking a relatively simple question. Especially because I'm not in the position to provide images and exact specifications of my art at the moment.

    First of all, I've recently gotten into sculpting. Not like, wheel spinner and clay sculpting. More like hand carving shapes and masks out of gypsum plaster, or plaster of paris if you're unfamiliar.

    What I do is cast a shape in a silicone bowl, break it out, and then carve it into a cartoon-like image.

    The casting and carving is going exceptionally well, and because the sculptures themselves are thick they aren't brittle at all. The problem I'm having, exactly, is finishing them. I'm not sure what to do.

    Do I set them in resin? Lacquer them? Cure them with a glass coating? And how would I go about doing that?

    yoshideath on
    Tealeaf Blood Elf Paladin, Hydraxis, Emberstorm.
    Proprietor of Chancemart, fancier of finer things.
  • Forbe!Forbe! Registered User regular
    edited April 2010
    yoshideath wrote: »
    Do I set them in resin? Lacquer them? Cure them with a glass coating? And how would I go about doing that?

    I don't know what your plans are to do with them, but any spray sealer should work fine if you just want them coated. I use PERMALAC for all my sealing, it is a high-grade sculpture sealant developed for outdoor metal. It allows you to wax over the surface to whatever polish you want. I would imagine natural shellac or an acrylic sealer would work fine for you. They make a paint with actual metal in it, pulverized copper and bronze. I've seen it used on plaster sculpture to make it look like a cast bronze.

    Forbe! on
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  • exitexit Registered User regular
    edited April 2010
    hey, has anyone messed with solar prints?

    i'm told i can print out an image on clear acetate to burn it onto the plate or w/e but my printer kind of sucks a million bags of dicks and all kinkos told me they have is "transparency" paper and they didn't seem to have much else to tell me other than it is, in fact, transparent.

    so is transparency the only requirement for solar printing stuff, or does acetate have something special i absolutely need?

    exit on
  • Forbe!Forbe! Registered User regular
    edited April 2010
    exit wrote: »
    hey, has anyone messed with solar prints?

    i'm told i can print out an image on clear acetate to burn it onto the plate or w/e but my printer kind of sucks a million bags of dicks and all kinkos told me they have is "transparency" paper and they didn't seem to have much else to tell me other than it is, in fact, transparent.

    so is transparency the only requirement for solar printing stuff, or does acetate have something special i absolutely need?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transparency_(projection)


    Transparency is another name for Cellulose Acetate. Most overhead transparencies are going to be made out of that material.

    Forbe! on
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  • exitexit Registered User regular
    edited April 2010
    yaaaay : D

    exit on
  • EncEnc A Fool with Compassion Pronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered User regular
    edited April 2010
    Quick question:

    I am a novice at drawing, and have just finished working with the initial books on the OP. I'm getting ready to move towards anatomy, but can only afford one of the books in the OP for the considerable future. Which should I pick up first?

    Enc on
  • NightDragonNightDragon 6th Grade Username Registered User regular
    edited April 2010
    Bridgman's is actually pretty cheap. Definitely pick that up, for starters.

    NightDragon on
  • m3nacem3nace Registered User regular
    edited April 2010
    does anyone know or have an idea of, how they do the scene backgrounds in anime? (specifically something like studio ghibli)
    I've always wanted to know and try it myself

    m3nace on
  • NightDragonNightDragon 6th Grade Username Registered User regular
    edited April 2010
    m3nace wrote: »
    does anyone know or have an idea of, how they do the scene backgrounds in anime? (specifically something like studio ghibli)
    I've always wanted to know and try it myself

    Hand-painted in gouache and/or acrylic, I'd imagine. Is that what you meant by "how"?

    NightDragon on
  • m3nacem3nace Registered User regular
    edited April 2010
    m3nace wrote: »
    does anyone know or have an idea of, how they do the scene backgrounds in anime? (specifically something like studio ghibli)
    I've always wanted to know and try it myself

    Hand-painted in gouache and/or acrylic, I'd imagine. Is that what you meant by "how"?

    pretty much.
    Thanks
    If you'd excuse me I'll go have my father teach me some gouache and acrylic techniques

    m3nace on
  • DirtyDirtyVagrantDirtyDirtyVagrant Registered User regular
    edited April 2010
    What's a good program to start with for basic web development needs? Something cheap or free would be ideal.

    DirtyDirtyVagrant on
  • ChillyChilly Registered User regular
    edited April 2010
    Ah, I guess it depends on your definition of cheap. If you're not looking for anything that requires you to learn anything about web development to be able to create a website, maybe look into Adobe Dreamweaver? The last time I used it was... 8 years ago? From what I hear though it has only become even easier to use and more custom a tool.

    Chilly on
  • NightDragonNightDragon 6th Grade Username Registered User regular
    edited April 2010
    Hand-code it

    Hand-code it aaaaall

    NightDragon on
  • ChillyChilly Registered User regular
    edited April 2010
    Hand coding takes like... learning. Just do like I do, if I need a website I hire someone.

    Chilly on
  • NightDragonNightDragon 6th Grade Username Registered User regular
    edited April 2010
    Well, if he really meant basic....learning HTML, and a bit of CSS, really isn't that difficult. The pain in the ass mostly comes from cross-browser checking, and even then my solution is usually just to look up the problem in Google, and find my solutions that way.

    Having a program that can color-code things (img tags, links, etc) is really handy. If you use a Mac, Taco HTML is a good program for that. But really, for something that's going to be really simple? I just feel like hand-coding is the best option, rather than spending lots of $$ on a program. Or, in some cases, even having to learn the new program. Getting the "basics" down about HTML might take a person a day. Just for me, personally, I think that'd be the better option. :)

    NightDragon on
  • DirtyDirtyVagrantDirtyDirtyVagrant Registered User regular
    edited April 2010
    Is hand-coding like the defacto standard?

    If that's the case, then I guess I could learn. I wouldn't want to make it too easy on myself.

    When I say basic, I just mean a few pages with some design graphics and some text and stuff.

    DirtyDirtyVagrant on
  • NightDragonNightDragon 6th Grade Username Registered User regular
    edited April 2010
    Well, I know a lot of people that prefer to hand-code stuff. I've never done anything super-complex, so hand-coding is my preferred option.

    And yes, "a few pages with some design graphics and some text and stuff" would be hella simple to create. Learn you some HTML's!

    NightDragon on
  • OrikaeshigitaeOrikaeshigitae Registered User, ClubPA regular
    edited April 2010
    hand-coding is best because it allows you to keep absolute control of your code. WYSIWYG editors introduce a whole lot of unnecessary crap that at best makes your page slower to load, and at worst breaks compatibility or presentation.

    Orikaeshigitae on
  • NightDragonNightDragon 6th Grade Username Registered User regular
    edited April 2010
    I didn't mention that about Dreamweaver, but that's what I hated about Dreamweaver, the first few times I tried it out. Apparently (so I've been told) they fixed a lot of that?

    But yes, hand-coding gives you absolute control, and no excessive code.

    NightDragon on
  • GrennGrenn Registered User regular
    edited April 2010
    Don't bother with Dreamweaver - you can cobble together a site with it, but it will give you clunky results and you won't learn a thing.

    Download Notepad++


    Then head over to somewhere like http://www.htmldog.com/ or http://www.w3schools.com/ and go through the tutorials for HTML (actually, you should be learning XHTML, which is basically HTML which adheres to certain rules and standards - it's not difficult stuff).

    THEN learn ye some CSS. You will likely be picking up bits of both as you go but CSS makes more sense once you know your HTML stuff.

    (Basically HTML is for the content and link structure of the site; CSS is for the presentation and layout.)

    This book is fantastic: http://www.amazon.com/CSS-Missing-David-Sawyer-McFarland/dp/0596802447/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1272617188&sr=8-1 and the tutorials are actually quite fun to go through.

    I think once you put a bit of time into it, you'll be surprised at how easy it is to get satisfying results.

    Good luck adventurer!

    Grenn on
  • ManonvonSuperockManonvonSuperock Registered User regular
    edited April 2010
    hurm, yes.....

    I will be doing the same thing this summer.

    ManonvonSuperock on
  • ZEROIDZEROID Registered User regular
    edited April 2010
    Grenn wrote: »

    I really like Notepadd++ with all the color coding, that's what I use when I code anything in Windows.


    And w3school is where I learned HTML and CSS too. But there are tons of tutorials out there that are great too. Those two are highly recommended.

    ZEROID on
  • MimMim I prefer my lovers… dead.Registered User regular
    edited May 2010
    Really silly question, but with anatomy are you just supposed to re-draw the figures in the book of the anatomical structures of the bones/muscles and it'll transfer into your drawings some how to make it proportional/anatomically accurate?

    Mim on
  • m3nacem3nace Registered User regular
    edited May 2010
    Not entirely sure but that's how it works for me. Whenever I draw something I can remember it quite clearly the next time I decide to draw something like it.

    m3nace on
  • NightDragonNightDragon 6th Grade Username Registered User regular
    edited May 2010
    Mim wrote: »
    Really silly question, but with anatomy are you just supposed to re-draw the figures in the book of the anatomical structures of the bones/muscles and it'll transfer into your drawings some how to make it proportional/anatomically accurate?

    It's a little more involved than that. Learning how to draw anatomy - or really, anything, for that matter - is not really a passive thing. What will be passive is how your ability to see changes. By that I mean that as you get more and more skilled and adept at drawing certain subjects, you'll be able to spot things that look "off" more and more. Previous drawings you've made that you thought looked great will slowly start to look worse and worse, the more you learn. You'll be able to see all the mistakes you've made. This is actually a really exciting process, because it means that you're learning!

    Copying stuff in itself will do little to nothing for you. The thing that is almost never stressed - and I have no idea why - is that you need to absorb the information you're studying. In other words, simply copying an image of an arm, with the thought process: "okay, there's a curve here, a slightly sharper curve here...this part is darker than that part...and a line comes off this curve this way..." isn't going to do much for you, because you'll be studying the subject in little pieces that have little to no relation to the whole. You also won't be thinking about anything in 3D space - you'll be thinking about it in 2D space. When copying a picture or drawing of an arm, you should be thinking something that's more along the lines of: "Okay, this muscle goes around the bone, and overlaps here...I'm drawing this line coming off the curve because another muscle is attached beneath it...this muscle form is a little more sharply curved because the muscle is contracted..." and etc.

    The more you absorb the how's and why's of things, and understand WHY you're drawing the lines and curves that you're drawing...the more you'll absorb, and the more effective your studies will be. The next few times you draw, you may remember "oh right! I remember this muscle overlaps this other muscle!" and then you'll know how to draw that. You may remember "oh, the proportion of this thing is twice the length of this other thing!" and then you'll put that into your pieces.

    When I'm drawing, it's a constant, constant back-and-forth of all these things I've learned over the years. "okay so the arm is going to be about this length, but it's being lifted, so make sure it still aligns properly with her torso...okay, her pectoral muscles are going to make a line appear here, that's going to end here, and this other line is the muscle underneath this...okay, and remember that fat on the arm is stored here, so make that a little more curved...add a little line here...which way is her hand turned? Oh, okay, then her forearm muscles are going to be drawn this way...make this line lighter, you're going to draw a bracer over it soon, don't want it to be too dark to leave a ghost when it's erased"...and etc etc etc. And all that thought may occur over a few seconds. It seems like a lot, but it becomes second nature the more and more you practice and draw. Just like how when you first start learning how to drive, you may have to think "okay, I'm going to do this now" or "don't forget to do this thing"...but after awhile, you don't have to think about it at all...it's just automatic.

    Drawing stuff that you've been drawing forever becomes more "automatic"...understanding/absorbing/using the information is much more active, in terms of thought....but slowly developing an understanding of how things "really look", and if a drawing looks "correct" or "incorrect" - at least in my experience - has been much more of a passive thing. Sometimes I have surprised myself by drawing something I thought I had no idea how to draw, only to discover that somehow I did actually know a little bit about how the thing looked. That was passive learning.

    I think this is also why people who have drawn the same thing forever find it really difficult to break out of their molds, if they're trying to improve...it's because drawing that way has become automatic, a passive process...and they need to expend actual thought and concentration if they want to successfully draw something differently.

    [edit] sorry for the novel :P I just find this particular question really fun to talk about and discuss with people.

    NightDragon on
  • Angel_of_BaconAngel_of_Bacon Moderator mod
    edited May 2010
    To expand on what ND is getting at, a methodology I was taught for trying to get more out of drawing out of anatomy books (Bridgman's specifically) would be this:
    http://deadoftheday.blogspot.com/2009/07/perspiration-anatomy.html

    There's a problem common to a lot of anatomy books, in that they don't really do much to teach you how to draw anatomy- full of accurate technical information and well-drawn plates of muscle diagrams, to be sure, but often not so much, 'what will this limb look like when bent', or 'what if it's foreshortened', or 'how will the light effect the forms?'.

    Bridgman's books are different, in that in terms of detailed technical information and very polished diagrammatic illustrations, there's really not all that much, but what he does do well is to break up the anatomy into concepts that are usable to artists- reducing down the complexities of the billion muscles and bones in the body into you simple masses and muscle groupings, that are more directly applicable to how one would actually approach drawing a figure in a drawing, rather than how you'd draw anatomy in a medical illustration.

    If you did a drawing with all the little muscles outlined individually like you see in most anatomy textbooks, you'd end up with a weak drawing with a lot of noodly, inconsequential lines running all over everything, spoiling the drawing as a whole. With those texts you don't get much direction in what is and what isn't visually necessary in a drawing, making learning to do good drawings exclusively from them very difficult.

    The downside of the Bridgman books, however, is that the illustrations themselves, while very useful and well-done, are not the clearest, most well-defined drawings in the world, and copying them directly may help you with proportional information and figuring out where stuff goes, but you may not be able to absorb much out of it, because you'll be copying his lines rather than what the drawing is saying, if you get me.

    By taking his drawings and then taking them a step further, into a more rendered, tonal version, you're forced to really get into the nitty gritty of figuring out the forms and how they function, rather than passively copying. If you just copy the drawings, you don't really have to think about what you're drawing- but taking it into further rendering, you quickly run into, "what the fuck does that line even mean?" all the time, and that's when you have to pull out one of the more formal anatomy textbooks like the Goldfinger book or look up other reference to see what he's talking about, in order for you to know it and draw it. Having to actively use your mind and seeking out additional information will make the act of absorbing the information into your brain much easier and natural, even if in doing it, the actual work is harder than straight copying.

    Angel_of_Bacon on
  • ShizumaruShizumaru Registered User regular
    edited May 2010
    I'd say it depends on what you want to get out of anatomy books.. I would do both drawings where rendering is involved, which something like bridgman is okay for, but I'd also mix in more academic stuff where you do those linear drawings like diagrams for better understanding of insertions and overlap which other books do much better than bridgman. Needless to say, you'll end up with, or should end up with a small library of just anatomy books.

    Shizumaru on
  • TheRealBadgerTheRealBadger Registered User regular
    edited May 2010
    Does anyone have any advice on getting started in photography? (sorry for the terribly broad question)

    My partner is looking to get into it and any good beginner resources or advice would be very much appreciated. She picked up a DSLR and has been firing away non-stop. I guess some general technical knowledge, composition basics and maybe direction on how to improve would be the next stop? I have no idea what I'm talking about.

    TheRealBadger on
  • OrikaeshigitaeOrikaeshigitae Registered User, ClubPA regular
    edited May 2010
    I have this book. It's a fairly good primer on the basics of photography.

    Orikaeshigitae on
  • Hotlead JunkieHotlead Junkie Registered User regular
    edited May 2010
    I'm looking to replace my laptop for one geared around graphic design work. The bare minimum I want is a dedicated graphics card, decent sized screen and it doesn't have to be incredibly fast since the most I'll be doing on it is using Opencanvas 4.5 with my tablet. Hopefully, if it's possible I'll be able to strip down my old lappy and add the RAM from that into the new one so a high ram isn't an issue.

    Coule anyone reccomend anything for me? I'm on a budget and am looking for something low end, around the £400/$600 range but am willing to go higher if that price is unreasonable. I really don't mind an older, more basic model as long as it has a dedicated graphics card for graphic design work.

    Thanks for any help.

    To clarify the most I'll be doing are things like posters, digital painting and such, I'm not planning to use it for 3d programs.

    Hotlead Junkie on
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  • DirtyDirtyVagrantDirtyDirtyVagrant Registered User regular
    edited May 2010
    So I have a question about frames, in the context of web pages.

    Is it possible to embed a single frame in the center of a page, with a toc on one side and adspace on the other side?

    The idea is to have the outer areas of the site (the heading, the table of contents, the adspace, and the footer) be persistent while the inner panel changes according to what you've clicked in the TOC.

    Is this making any sense? Is there another way to do this?

    DirtyDirtyVagrant on
  • NightDragonNightDragon 6th Grade Username Registered User regular
    edited May 2010
    Yep, that's totally possible (and I assume TOC is "Table of Contents", thought if you're talking about the navigational links, you should probably say that instead to avoid confusion). A lot of sites do that (have the "base" of the site the same, while an iframe changes based on the links clicked).

    When you make a link:

    <a href="link.html">Here's your link</a>

    You're going to have to add in target="framename":

    <a href="link.html" target="framename">Here's your link</a>

    Obviously, you're also going to have to give your iframe a name (in place of framename above), so when the link is clicked, the iframe changes, and not the entire page. The target attribute can make links open up pages in the same browser window, in a new browser window, in an iframe, etc.

    http://www.w3schools.com/tags/att_a_target.asp
    http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_frame.asp

    NightDragon on
  • DirtyDirtyVagrantDirtyDirtyVagrant Registered User regular
    edited May 2010
    Here's a very loose example of what I want to do (and yes, I did mean navigational links)
    dscn0057l.jpg

    Don't ask me why I would put navigational links on one side. I don't know.

    DirtyDirtyVagrant on
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