How to blend your pencil
Casually posts this at 3 am when no one is going to see it.
but FOLDS hoyl shit folds folds are so awesome man you literally have no idea I like drawing folds som uch I’ll put them in places where they don’t even belong sometimes. Honestly this is far from definitive and is just my understanding of how folds works gleamed from hours upon hours staring at strangers pants on mass transit, so don’t take my word for it, do your own study! Look at your own jeans in the mirror! look at other peoples jeans! google jeans on the internets! Each different fit is going to come with it’s own folds, depending on factors like the cut of the leg and how much fabric there is and how heavy it is and man there are just so many variables and things to think about it’s awesome
This is how you construct the human body. For all learning artist pay ESPECIALLY attention to the mark after 14:30 minutes! And I strongly recommend to draw along with the video tut, you need paper, a ruler and a pencil of course ^^
So I wrote and animated this tutorial for people working on my short film Bothered, but I figured it would be useful for all animators, particularly beginners. I borrowed some of these concepts from this awesome packet done by Jon Hooper and Michel Gagne, which is also pretty great!
I needed this earlier today. Thanks though! This is awesome.
Self explanatory.
Take this with a grain of rice. You can use this or not. I personally find my anatomy more fun than the canon style so.
But yeah this is how I work.
CRAPPY AS HELL EYE TUTORIAL
- Draw an eye and flood the iris with the base color of the eye
- Draw in a pupil. I don’t make my pupils solid black, just a really dark value of the main color. I also block in shading in the top half of the eye here, using a shade between the main and the pupil (you can use the burn tool, shh, but don’t abuse it)
- Using a shade of the main color lighter than the pupil but darker than the iris shading, I manually draw in some iris lines. Do your best to make sure they radiate from the center
- Oh no I did a lot of shit on this step before I remembered to save :c Highlight the bottom half of the eye with a lighter hue of the main color, and then use a shade of that lighter hue to draw in iris lines in between the prior darker ones. I also go around the border of the pupil with the smudge or water tool, depending on program, to disrupt it a little and add to the effect of striation on the iris.
- Go over all the striations with the water brush (or the blur brush) on a REALLY low %, just enough to disrupt how sharp and perfect the lines are. Retrospectively, if you laid down the striations with an airbrush or ANY OTHER SOFT-EDGED BRUSH, you could skip this step uwu
- hail satan and unabashedly use dodge/burn. Dodge the underside of the pupil and right around it, sort of like a halo. Burn a stripe from the top half down. If you wanted to do this the Legit No Cheater way, just set a medium grey brush to multiply and use it where I said “burn” up there, and set it to screen, addition, or linear dodge where I said “dodge”. if you’re in SAI then just do it on a separate Multiply and Addition layer, respectively.
- Go back, with a very fine hard brush (I used 3px hard brush in PS) and add back in some distinct, fine striations to break up the blurry sameness of the iris.
- Color dropping the hue from one of the lightest part of the iris, blot in where you want the eye shines to go. Ponies usually have two round ones but make them your own. Make the halos a tiny bit bigger than you actually want the eye shine to be, this is going to be the halo that makes them blend a little more naturally into the eye.
- Go back with white and blot in the eye shines, leaving the color we put down in the last step visible around the borders. Add a little white in the brightest part of the bottom of the iris, too. Water/blur the far edge of the eye shines, the one furthest from the light source
YOU’RE DONE, WOWOW LOOK AT THAT EYE
that’s the basics, it’s not great or “correct” but it gets a neat effect.
Please Don’t Abuse Dodge/Burn. They’re tools and it’s okay to use them, but if it’s immediately obvious that you did, it’s ugly and you should stop. if you want to use it to help learn what the very saturated, bright (or dark for burn) version of a hue is, it’s great for that, and eventually you should be able to just use/choose the colors dodge and burn would give you anyway. and DON’T ABUSE BLUR/SMUDGE EITHER GUYS. AGAIN, OKAY IN SMALL DOSES, BUT DON’T STREAK THE SMUDGE TOOL BACK AND FORTH OVER THE WHOLE IRIS
I’m no good at really getting the wording and pacing of these short comics right.
Basically, I’ve recently come to the realisation that my goals had changed overtime once I joined Tumblr. What was once a ploy to just gain the popularity that everyone else seemed to be getting, slowly changed into me gaining a hobby I enjoyed greatly. Hell, simply putting out this comic feels great from the effort I put into it.
And me, being the person that I am, just felt the need to draw this up. I didn’t really have any idea on why i was doing it. I can see it’s nothing that would be considered professional, or anything like that. However, the effort I put into making it this far shows, and it’s a whole lot more satisfying than gaining a bunch of followers. So, I just felt sharing my lesson learned, because I know there are people out there who probably still want followers but have so much potential for what they do.
Basically, I learned that gaining popularity, while my first goal, was being approached the wrong way. It doesn’t take a wanting to become popular that will make you known by many (Though, there are exceptions to that. We know how those turned out). Instead, it takes a pride in what you do. A dedication that shows you enjoy what you are doing. In turn, people will notice your passion, and take an interest in it, possibly inspiring others.
Now, the ending panel might bring a little bit of a fume to people. There are people who make a living off of drawing on the internet. I won’t hold that argument against anyone. This moral lesson just doesn’t apply… maybe other than the “Enjoy it” part. I certainly hope those who take up drawing as their source of income to enjoy it very much. After all, they’ve made it to the point they use it as their way of staying in their home!
tl;dr: I’m really proud of myself and I felt like sharing it with all of you.
I have seen this argument countless times. It finally got to a point where I would like to post my take on it.
The argument that art is bad if if lacks anatomy fascinates me. I didn’t know art depended on anatomy to be considered art. For that matter I didn’t know that LIKING art was dependent…
Cómic published the last summer is the webcómic “Caniculadas”.
Special thanks to Andre for the translation!
