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Questions, Discussion, Tutorials

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Posts

  • DidgeridooDidgeridoo Flighty Dame Registered User regular
    Sorry I have no input on Kamvas tablets, initatefailure! Maybe someone else has used 'em, so consider this a bump.

    I just want to drop in to say a hearty 'thank you' to Peas and Chico again for the tutorials, as they've really helped me be less intimidated by digital art programs.

    The cntrlpaint tutorials are immensely helpful for the little shortcuts and navigation norms that come with these programs. When you haven't used these programs much, even the basics can be super confusing. I really appreciated the first video where the teacher just straight-up deleted most of the default tool bars. Made me realize I can be more in charge of the program and that I don't have to just accept what's presented. For some reason it never occurred to me before to simply delete or replace what was there.

    Aaron Blaise's step by step breakdown was really helpful for little things I might not think to ask about (like how the 'multiply' feature works), and his explanation clarified how layers work. He didn't mention them by name, but something about the way he explained it made it click for me. They're like animation cels! You can layer them on top of the background and what you do on one 'cel' doesn't change the other. Probably super remedial for you guys, but it was a real 'Ah HA' moment for me when that finally fell into place.

  • RadiationRadiation Registered User regular
    edited April 2020
    What software do you guys suggest? Daughter is doing photoshop in a digital art class, but uh....we aren't doing photoshop at home. Was looking at products from Affinity, but wasn't sure if there is something else I should be looking at.
    I installed GIMP on the computer (and I think inkscape), but she says they are too complicated. Or that she just doesn't like them.
    She's 14, so pretty okay on the computer for the most part.

    Radiation on
    PSN: jfrofl
  • PeasPeas Registered User regular
    https://www.clipstudio.net/en/
    There's a free trial

    It goes on sale every couple of months too and if you get a wacom tablet it might come together with it

  • initiatefailureinitiatefailure Registered User regular
    edited April 2020
    photoshop has a free trial and adobe is currently doing a 3 month free thing for people impacted by covid but i'm not sure if you needed to be paying previously or if there's like a eLearning students need access kind of deal.

    Gimp was always the free option people recommended my whole life but i haven't touched it in years.

    CorelPaint isn't bad, I've only used it a little though so I can't suggest too much about it but i remember them being way cheaper alternatives than PS.

    is clip studio related to manga studio? I remember always seeing that one recommended for many years.

    (my advice is not great because i've just used photoshop for years outside of a brief work stint where we used coreldraw and that introduced me to corelpaint)

    initiatefailure on
  • ChicoBlueChicoBlue Registered User regular
    Krita is free and pretty good. https://krita.org/en/

  • RadiationRadiation Registered User regular
    We'll give Clip studio a try today to see how she likes it. Thanks all!

    PSN: jfrofl
  • fatsaturnaliafatsaturnalia Registered User new member
    whats the standard tablet this forum recommends? im open to anything. i had an intuos 3 a few years ago by wacom and it was awesome but they dont make it anymore.

    looking at the wacom "Intuos Wireless Graphics Drawing Tablet" right now but dont want to waste 200 as theres some bad reviews... help!

  • DidgeridooDidgeridoo Flighty Dame Registered User regular
    I just got the medium Wacom Intuos and I really like it! Seems responsive and I like the software.

  • initiatefailureinitiatefailure Registered User regular
    I've had an intuos 2/3 in the past and they were always solid quality. Mine were scavenged from old college tech or design jobs so I never really dealt with their cost but I believe at the intuos range you're close to a lot of the reasonable nonWacom draw on screen directly tablets. I don't know. It's a different workflow using the intuos style tablet but you get used to it. I started looking into some options before all this stuff hit and kind of left it aside

  • DidgeridooDidgeridoo Flighty Dame Registered User regular
    Really solid tutorial on Clip Studio Paint, which also gets into digital painting basics in general. It's listed as "Clip Studio Paint Basics 2," but it's a standalone. He had an original one from a few years back which wasn't as good, so he remade it.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkLrMGpWayw

  • jungleroomxjungleroomx It's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovels Registered User regular
    I am getting back into the habit, as it were.

    I'm also going completely digital, at least for now. My iPad Pro is on its way, and I want to say I've covered my bases (Apple pencil, anti-fouling glove, dusted off my old Burne Hogarth anatomy books, etc), but it's been 15 years since I drew anything seriously.

    I just hope I'm not forgetting anything that would delay me getting rolling as soon as Procreate gets installed.

    (Also note I tested out a wacom graphic tablet, not one with a screen, and after a week I determined it was not for me. The iPad seems to be the best deal for what I'm looking to do)

  • PeasPeas Registered User regular
    3j4rzi5h528q.png

    Hi folks I hope the drawing is adequate enough and I actually know what I am doing for the most part. I have difficulty figuring out the cast shadow portion of the diagonal structure, especially the line in magenta. Can someone tell me if my understanding is alright?

  • Angel_of_BaconAngel_of_Bacon Moderator mod
    @Peas Did a quick mockup of your scenario in Blender. Your magenta line wouldn't happen because that whole plane would be in shadow, and a flat plane cannot cast a shadow onto itself. Also the line defining the cast shadow on the right would start at the vertex where the overhang meets the box.

    Sometimes it can help to sketch the scene from the perspective of the light (ie: if it's a lamp, position your eyeball where the lightbulb would be. If it's the sun, you're standing on the surface of the sun and looking at the earth through a telescope). That way, anything that can be seen from this view you know will be lit by the light, and anything else will not be lit by that light directly.
    The top right image here shows that perspective (well maybe a couple decimal points on the angles off, but you get the idea) -so you can see there that since the light can't 'see' that overhanging bottom plane, you know it will be in shadow.

    npndggupwltd.png

  • PeasPeas Registered User regular
    edited May 2020
    Thanks for the incredible advice and taking your valuable time yet again to teach someone like me @Angel_of_Bacon! I feel like I have to start paying you for all the amazing replies which I have squandered over the years ( please don't charge me, I hope I can repay you back somehow though). It's gonna take me a while to fully understand and absorb the concept of viewing from the point of the light source, it makes a lot of sense but my lizard brain is currently frying thinking about it. In the meantime I reinstalled Blender again, hopefully I will be able to remember how to use it and do what you did for analysis.

    I have been trying to do the construction techniques from Scot Robertson's book these past few weeks but I feel like I am still failing to understand something really fundamental because everything starts to fall apart when I try to do slightly complicated shapes or blocks on blocks.

    edit:

    It's kinda embarrassing that it took me more than 5 hours to figure out what I did wrong, in the end I tried to make everything the simplest I could think and I realize that I didn't actually cast the shadow of magenta line of the original and that threw me off entirely, I have to thank Angel_of_Bacon for pointing out that something is really funky on the right side, not sure if I would ever find that out by myself.

    Now then, I hope this is much better and correct, if not it's gonna be super awkward...

    gu1vxvtd2ayw.png

    edit:
    qao7db1bfth2.png

    I did it... my revenge is complete...d?
    Btw anyone knows what is a reasonable timing to complete something like this? I am asking because I guess I want a goal to strife towards, I know I am slow but not actually how slow, and I did't even do actual rendering yet

    Peas on
  • SublimusSublimus Artist. nowhereRegistered User regular
    @Peas Don't worry about being slow! I'm slow as shit when I'm trying new stuff. Or even some paintings I'm slow as shit. Quickness will come in time!

    Not to totally discount being economical though. I guess it's a balance.

  • danxdanx Registered User regular
    edited June 2020
    Looking at Juliette Aristides books which are on sale here at the moment. They have a work book structure. Anyone here been through them? Specifically looking at Beginning Drawing Atelier and Figure Drawing Atelier.

    edit: spelling

    danx on
  • PeasPeas Registered User regular
    edited June 2020
    I am afraid I am not familiar with the books myself, I hope you don't mind that I ask a non related question:

    I think I have gotten used to 3d in a way to be able to use it for learning how to render light but I am not sure how to set up proper lighting to actually use it.
    x8nn2505ld6g.png

    For example I find it really hard to see the gradients of the half tone and core shadow when I try to replicate it as digital illustration. Anyone have any tips or advice on how to actually go about it? The above image is 3d, not an illustration.

    Peas on
  • GnomeTankGnomeTank What the what? Portland, OregonRegistered User regular
    edited June 2020
    Hello art friends!

    I am not an artist. My daughter is much more inclined to art than me and she's getting to the stage now, at 12, where she's really beyond my capacity to help much from a technology point of view. That's many words to say: She wants a drawing tablet, please help I am clueless here. She's been using an iPad and Apple Pencil for about three years now but she really wants a tablet for her desk/PC. I'm willing to spend for something decent but she also doesn't need a professional level setup. Any good suggestions?

    She also wants a program called Adobe Animate, which is not cheap. I only somewhat grasp everything that it does, so while I can google search "Adobe Animate alternatives", I have no real clue what I'm looking for. I'm not fully sure she knows exactly what all it does yet, the seed of desire has been planted mostly by watching YouTube videos of some of her favorite animators. If it's absolutely the best tool for what she wants to do and there aren't great alternatives I'll pay for it, but some alternative suggestions would be awesome.

    GnomeTank on
    Sagroth wrote: »
    Oh c'mon FyreWulff, no one's gonna pay to visit Uranus.
    Steam: Brainling, XBL / PSN: GnomeTank, NintendoID: Brainling, FF14: Zillius Rosh SFV: Brainling
  • IrukaIruka Registered User, Moderator mod
    GnomeTank wrote: »
    Hello art friends!

    I am not an artist. My daughter is much more inclined to art than me and she's getting to the stage now, at 12, where she's really beyond my capacity to help much from a technology point of view. That's many words to say: She wants a drawing tablet, please help I am clueless here. She's been using an iPad and Apple Pencil for about three years now but she really wants a tablet for her desk/PC. I'm willing to spend for something decent but she also doesn't need a professional level setup. Any good suggestions?

    She also wants a program called Adobe Animate, which is not cheap. I only somewhat grasp everything what it does, so while I can google search "Adobe Animate alternatives", I have no real clue what I'm looking for. I'm not fully sure she knows exactly what all it does yet, the seed of desire has been planted mostly by watching YouTube videos of some of her favorite animators. If it's absolutely the best tool for what she wants to do and there aren't great alternatives I'll pay for it, but some alternative suggestions would be awesome.


    Sorry for chasing you around @GnomeTank , but I wanted to address the software here. I think the comparable alternative to adobe animate is going to be ToonBoom, but unfortunately that is equally expensive. With the adobe subscription, you'd at least get other useful software out of it... but you need to ask her what type of animation she wants to do.

    It would be really hypocritical to say "She does not need access to adobe software", because I had access at a super young age thanks to my step dad being in graphic design. When I got to art school, I was ahead of kids who were still just learning how to get around menus in photoshop, and more comfortable taking on new software in general. Some people get over software hurtles really quickly no matter what, but she has time to figure out how to "play" with her tools, and not feel the pressure of assignments, or work, or money. If facilitating that doesn't break the bank, I dont want to undersell its value.

    If shes in primary school, I'm fairly sure you can apply for the student discounts for the whole suite of software (https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/buy/students.html?#ste_eligibility) Adobe wants your kid to get into their ecosystem just as much as they want your money. Toonboom has this option as well: https://store.toonboom.com/students

    She can also, however, learn to animate in clip paint or Krita (or on paper!). if shes never animated at all, encourage her to just try some short projects in these.

    Example of animating in Krita:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8XImKvRAls

  • GnomeTankGnomeTank What the what? Portland, OregonRegistered User regular
    She starts sixth grade this year, so yes, primary school. I looked at the Adobe student thing, and I am totally willing to spring 20 bucks a month for her to have access. I just need to contact Adobe and figure out how to prove she's a student. She doesn't have a school email and we haven't gotten a report card in six months with COVID. I just need to contact Adobe and ask them what they'll accept.

    I'll send her that video for sure, thanks!

    Sagroth wrote: »
    Oh c'mon FyreWulff, no one's gonna pay to visit Uranus.
    Steam: Brainling, XBL / PSN: GnomeTank, NintendoID: Brainling, FF14: Zillius Rosh SFV: Brainling
  • PeasPeas Registered User regular
    Man I would love to animate too but it's just too late for me to start so I am glad that there's someone like you out there, you are a great person mate

  • DidgeridooDidgeridoo Flighty Dame Registered User regular
    Bullllllshit it's never too late. You can still hold a pen? You can still use a computer?

    Learning animation is on my goal list, and I'm no spring chicken.

    Which reminds me that I need to get my butt in gear and get through my DAB lessons.

  • OctirinOctirin Registered User regular
    Peas wrote: »
    For example I find it really hard to see the gradients of the half tone and core shadow when I try to replicate it as digital illustration. Anyone have any tips or advice on how to actually go about it? The above image is 3d, not an illustration.
    Zooming waaaaaaaay out helps a lot. It's all so subtle that I think it's probably easier to decide what ought to be happening, try it, and then compare with the original, otherwise I find myself easily tricked by optical illusions, like mach bands. For instance, the top sphere appears to me to have a dark halo around the top half, but that's just an illusion.

    Also, throwing a threshold filter on the reference and dragging the slider back and forth reveals the truth, like how the bounce light on the shadowed half of the first sphere is wrapping around it as if it's somewhat reflective, but that might also be from light bouncing off what appears to be a back wall?

    Also also, use a big enough brush, or risk going insane while trying to smoothly blend things with a small one. I've seen people do really convincing shading in very few brush strokes, though that may have also involved masking and a soft edged brush. To that end, I've found that sometimes it's easier and cleaner to knock a whole region back and try again, rather than attempting to fix what's there. You can also lock the layer's alpha once you have the silhouette, for easier shading.

    disclaimer: I'm still trying to figure this stuff out, too.

  • DidgeridooDidgeridoo Flighty Dame Registered User regular
    Anyone have a good Clip Studio Paint animation tutorial? An animate-along one would be amazing, if you know of one.

    I've been playing around with it and I did manage to make a line wiggle across the screen!! But I'm a bit confused by how layers work withing the cels, and how animation folders work exactly.

  • PeasPeas Registered User regular
    TUTORIAL Learn to Animate in Clip Studio Paint! 16:03
    https://youtu.be/eJVWkuwsYwM

    How to Animate in Clip Studio Paint - The Easy Way! TIPS/TUTORIAL 21:53
    https://youtu.be/QKoc9zkI4vk

    I came across a few a while ago, hopefully that will help you find more down the road

  • PeasPeas Registered User regular
    edited July 2020
    Hi everyone again, I would like to ask about the subject of drawing a field of grass. What's the best way to go about doing it without going insane?

    Peas on
  • DidgeridooDidgeridoo Flighty Dame Registered User regular
    edited August 2020
    Belated thanks for the tutorials, Peas, I am currently working on an animation which will probably take me an excrutiatingly long time for a 5 second gif, but it's fun so far!

    Does anyone have good lessons or other sources for practicing more dynamic poses? Looking over my thread, I notice most of the stuff I draw from imagination tends to be looking off in a vague direction at a 3 quarter angle.

    Didgeridoo on
  • Angel_of_BaconAngel_of_Bacon Moderator mod
    @Didgeridoo
    The book I'd suggest the most on the subject is Force: Dynamic Life Drawing for Animators by Mike Mattesi https://www.amazon.com/FORCE-Dynamic-Drawing-Anniversary-Force/dp/1138919578
    Coincidentally, there is someone in the Resources forum who taught using that method that dropped a lot of tips on the Force drawing methodology here:
    https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/219935/force-figure-drawing#latest

    "How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way" by John Buscema and Stan Lee also has a very good section on dynamic posing. The Drawn to Life books by Walt Stanchfield are also worth looking into, though it's somewhat disorganized as a result of being a collection of handouts he made during his time teaching at Disney feature animation.

    I'm willing to bet Proko has some good tips on his youtube videos as well if you look up gesture focused ones.

    And I put this together in a hurry so I hope you'll forgive the chicken scratch/any typos, but if you don't want to wait for books to show up/are short on cash/time, I tried making a crash course of ideas you might want to try out. Note that these are just concepts that you can use- sometimes you'll want to do all of this, sometimes it'll be more appropriate to do none of it (sometimes the symmetry of a static pose can be exactly what you want- if you're drawing the Colossus of Rhodes, dude probably shouldn't look like he's in the middle of a gymnastics routine after all). But play around with this stuff and have some fun seeing what you can do with it:

    of4o49cylxbj.png

  • DidgeridooDidgeridoo Flighty Dame Registered User regular
    Wow Bacon, thank you so much! I will definitely try out your 'crash course' ideas, and will check out the resources you've compiled.

    I've also signed up for Alex Woo's gesture drawing course on Schoolism to alternate with my DAB lessons. Thanks again! I've now got lots of fantastic material to study from. Time to get to work!

  • Brovid HasselsmofBrovid Hasselsmof [Growling historic on the fury road] Registered User regular
    edited August 2020
    Hi folks. Does anyone know how to use Davinci Resolve? I've just started learning to do editing and am practicing by making a Let's Play. I would like to add a graphic that is on screen permanently, but I can change when I want (a number that I can update). I know how to add text/titles but I was wondering if there's a better way, like adding something as a whole layer? Not sure if that makes sense.

    If anyone knows the kind of thing I'm talking about and can just tell me what it would be called I can look up how to do it.

    Brovid Hasselsmof on
  • Angel_of_BaconAngel_of_Bacon Moderator mod
    edited August 2020
    @Brovid Hasselsmof I've only kinda dabbled in Resolve so there might be a better way to do this- but my suggestion would be to make a text layer on a new Video Track, stretch it to fit the whole time period it's gotta be on screen, and then use the Blade Edit Mode to cut it when you need the text to change, and edit the text for each segment. Then if you want a backing graphic on it, put that on its own Video Track underneath the text track, which wouldn't change (if I'm understanding what you're looking for correctly here).

    You could also make a Text+ layer and keyframe the Styled Text field (click the diamond on the top right to add/remove keyframes), but given how keyframing works in the program (having to go in to Fusion>Keyframes to edit them), I think that'd be more difficult to edit to time out with your other footage. (I'm assuming this is meant to be like a 'Fail Counter' or something.)

    Angel_of_Bacon on
  • Brovid HasselsmofBrovid Hasselsmof [Growling historic on the fury road] Registered User regular
    Thanks, that does what I want. For some reason I didn't think I could have multiple tracks of just text. I dunno why.

    Now I'm having a problem where the program won't save, and it just spent an hour rendering and produced an unplayable video, so that's fun :rotate:

  • Angel_of_BaconAngel_of_Bacon Moderator mod
    If you've used some other cheap lightweight video editors (iMovie and such), I think there's usually a limit on the text on those. Resolve is more on the professional side of things so you shouldn't run into those kinda of limitations I think.

    The saving issue, I'm not sure what's wrong there :(
    The unplayable video could either be something wrong with your encoding settings, or the rendering process got interrupted/cut off somehow and yielded a corrupted file. For the former, it might be worth rendering out some small segments of the video with a variety of different settings to make sure you'd be getting something usable before spending another hour of rendering time. For the latter, I dunno, turn off your Power Management settings to make sure your computer doesn't go to sleep during that hour? Don't touch the computer the whole time and keep your fingers crossed?

    There's also the old 3d rendering trick of outputting the video to a sequence of still frames so if the program crashes you can pick up rendering where it left off, then combining the sequence of stills and the audio back together in another render, which wouldn't have the render cost of all the compositing/effects work. That wouldn't be my first go-to solution since doing that might eat your hard-drive space up like crazy depending on how long the video is, but it's a hey-maybe-if-all-else-fails kinda of suggestion.

    (Caveat: These are just my first thoughts, and Googling the problem is probably going to get you some better/more informed ideas.)

  • Brovid HasselsmofBrovid Hasselsmof [Growling historic on the fury road] Registered User regular
    I kind of assume whatever caused the saving problem could also have messed with the rendering? Googling around I find a lot of people with the save problem and no fix, but everyone seems to think it gets triggered by some kind of edit. I rebooted my PC and the project was almost complete so it must have been autosaving at least.

    Trying another render now. If this works I guess I'll just get into the habit of quicksaving after doing anything, and rebooting before rendering. I have no idea why that would fix it but I don't know computers. I just know it worked fine yesterday.

  • Angel_of_BaconAngel_of_Bacon Moderator mod
    Yeah frequent saving, and especially before kicking off a render, is always a good idea. (I've used other video editors before and the rendering process always seems to be a little finicky/needing troubleshooting for some reason, no matter the specific software. I think half the reason professional editors spend a fortune on hardware is just so they can get to a re-render quicker when something inevitably goes wrong).

    Best of luck on this- wish I could be more help than just offering, "yeah, it happens" commiseration, but I think some of these issues/frustrations just come with the territory unfortunately.

  • Brovid HasselsmofBrovid Hasselsmof [Growling historic on the fury road] Registered User regular
    I appreciate the effort!

  • Brovid HasselsmofBrovid Hasselsmof [Growling historic on the fury road] Registered User regular
    edited August 2020
    So today I noticed that my hard drive has gone from ~170 gig free to 16. I have discovered a folder called CacheClip which Google tells me is associated with Resolve, which contains 163 gig of .dvcc files.

    Do you reckon the save/render problem could be because of running out of space?

    Edit: looks like this is what Resolve creates when I tell it to optimize the media before editing. Apparently I can delete it with no issue so I'm gonna go ahead and do that.

    I knew video editing stuff took up a lot of space but I didn't expect it to be this much, heh. I guess that was pretty naïve.

    Brovid Hasselsmof on
  • Angel_of_BaconAngel_of_Bacon Moderator mod
    edited August 2020
    ...Thank you for the tip, you just saved me 30 gigs of space. It's certainly possible that running out of space can/was contributing to the rendering issue, so I'd keep an eye on that sort of thing.

    And yeah video editing takes up a ridiculous amount of space. If you're planning on producing work on a consistent basis, you'll probably have to work in the cost of regularly buying external hard drives into your budget, or get in the habit of deleting the raw footage after completing and rendering each project, and then hope and pray you never need to go back and reedit or otherwise need access to the full quality footage ever again in the future.

    Angel_of_Bacon on
  • Brovid HasselsmofBrovid Hasselsmof [Growling historic on the fury road] Registered User regular
    edited August 2020
    For now I'm just gonna record my LP at 720p instead of 1080 because then the editing works smoothly enough I don't have to optimize it. I figure that drop in quality probably doesn't matter for a poorly made LP of a 9 year old game. If I end up doing more video stuff I will spring for a bigger drive.

    I also turned on the Live Save so Resolve now autosaves every time I make a change and I don't have to worry about it. Which is a feature I only learned about from a random Reddit post, you'd think the app would maybe highlight it.

    Brovid Hasselsmof on
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