i feel bad for being sassy cos i realized now this poor person is asking about the background of images like this

which is obviously not handmade. sorry for getting confused, it happens more often than you think that people accuse me of using a filter for my pixel art or something

so here is a tutorial for aseprite on how to crunch the colours of a photo like this into any palette !!

step 1. find a royalty free photo or take one yourself heres one i just took on my camera

2. open it in aseprite and change the image size to be smaller whatever you need

MM yes nice and crunchy

Select a palette of your choice on the left side of the screen on the palette panel. use the middle icon to open the palettes dropdown.

i am using my palette i made at 20k followers, you can download it free here

once you have chosen your palette, in the top bar go to sprite > color mode > indexed. it should automatically choose the nearest colour it can from your palette for every pixel

as you can see its quite messy and i do like to clean it up a little but it looks good messy too like old games!! sorry for being sassy

hey these are some tips for some of the little details in drawing fat folks that some people might not know!

everyone has fat on their bodies so its a worthwhile skill to have, but most art tutorials leave it out. heres some other good tips from artists!!

Also, please don't forget to draw fat necks. When I search for fat art, oftentimes the lack of a fat neck makes a character not look fat anymore because the artist basically just drew a skinny person from the shoulders up.

A resource I suggest is fatphotoref. You can also look at fat positive blogs for tons of photos and drawings that can help you learn how fat bodies look in different poses. Tags you can search on this blog include fat art, fatshion, fat athletes, and fat masc. Those tags are probably the best if you're wanting to use fatphobiabusters for pictures to help you learn how to draw fat people. Another tip I have heard a fat artist mention before is if you are fat yourself, use yourself as a reference photo. I hope this helps!

-Mod Worthy

hot artists don't gatekeep

I've been resource gathering for YEARS so now I am going to share my dragons hoard

Floorplanner. Design and furnish a house for you to use for having a consistent background in your comic or anything! Free, you need an account, easy to use, and you can save multiple houses.

Comparing Heights. Input the heights of characters to see what the different is between them. Great for keeping consistency. Free.

Magma. Draw online with friends in real time. Great for practice or hanging out. Free, paid plan available, account preferred.

Smithsonian Open Access. Loads of free images. Free.

SketchDaily. Lots of pose references, massive library, is set on a timer so you can practice quick figure drawing. Free.

SculptGL. A sculpting tool which I am yet to master, but you should be able to make whatever 3d object you like with it. free.

Pexels. Free stock images. And the search engine is actually pretty good at pulling up what you want.

Figurosity. Great pose references, diverse body types, lots of "how to draw" videos directly on the site, the models are 3d and you can rotate the angle, but you can't make custom poses or edit body proportions. Free, account option, paid plans available.

Line of Action. More drawing references, this one also has a focus on expressions, hands/feet, animals, landscapes. Free.

Animal Photo. You pose a 3d skull model and select an animal species, and they give you a bunch of photo references for that animal at that angle. Super handy. Free.

Height Weight Chart. You ever see an OC listed as having a certain weight but then they look Wildly different than the number suggests? Well here's a site to avoid that! It shows real people at different weights and heights to give you a better idea of what these abstract numbers all look like. Free to use.

From here: tumblr(.)com/bad-comic-art/722210984058585088/silver-surfer-70-1992

My anatomy is still wonky, as is perspective, but I still feel like this quick sketch is an improvement.

submitted by @ynqviry

sorry for this but tungle is being tungle and not letting me reply to this post rip, here's what I tried to say:

@minimattsmith Im Not the one who did this but I can tell you a little about it.

There's different names for this technique but I've mostly heard it called "direct symbol drawing". You train yourself to draw very quickly by having one way to draw everything from pure muscle memory. Most cartoons, comic books, and manga art uses this technique bc it's extremely Fast compared to the more volumetric style the submitter used. there's nothing wrong with that and it's actually an insanely difficult skill to learn and perfect. It takes Work and I admire folk who manage it well.

What makes this example shit is that the og artist chose to design their symbol library in such a way that all the women in their work end up looking like scary blowup dolls instead of like you know characters in a story with individual personalities and opinions on their situations.

do u know the other names for the technique because it sounds really helpful but google and youtube arent showing any good results

So part of the issue with researching this style is basically every source will tell you how to Not do it. Because 'Symbol Based Drawing' is actually the default way humans draw, you can especially see this in new artists and how very small children depict the world around them. example: Everyone draws eyes like this until they learn how Not to. It's the most direct translation of how our brains process the shape of an eye.

Your brain assigns a Thing a Shape and tells your hand to make that shape. Doing it on purpose is just refining that natural like, instinct, and teaching your brain to use new and more aesthetic shapes.

(and also learning to curb the way brains scale certain parts of the body based on how important they are to like how we perceive each other. Hands and eyes getting massive noses and ears disappearing. limbs getting really long and everything else getting made skinny with the 'sexy' bits getting more emphasis is a big part of this. That's why it's so common. it's just how humans do. and symbol based styles just Harness that. and also make it Really obvious if your entire perception of women is just "sex object")

The easiest example I can give you is actually those "how to draw anime" books thatre in every craft store, I think Mark Criley (sp?) is the guy who makes them. He doesn't teach you how to draw the Thing, he teaches you the easiest shapes to Convey the thing and how big to make them in proportion to each other. and that's what symbol based drawing is All about.

I tend to think of it as a variation on cartooning so when I started developing my own symbol style I mostly referenced stylized comics I enjoy, like Dykes To Watch Out For, Scrupulosity Comics, The Property of Hate, I'm The Grim Reaper, and the TAZ graphic novels.

anyways I rambled bc this is a topic I find fascinating but tldr: Yaoi hands are human nature but still fugly.

i understand the struggle of "i can't draw how do i visualize this OC" and its like, okay, picrews and dollmakers have limited options (and are often limited by the artist's imagination). Heroforge perhaps not your style. You're broke as hell, so commissioning someone or finding someone who can do it on the cheap is hard. Certainly it's hard to find someone to just Do It For Free and that's a huge imposition. And learning to draw is [come back in ten to fifteen years lol]

What is also an option that I think has fallen out of fashion as programs have gotten more advanced but is still legitimate, though:

Kitbashing and editing sprites.

"but i can't draw" you don't need to. Get your hands on those game assets and edit them with your 1-px pencil or paintbuckets or whatever. Recolour them. Smash them together like dolls. You can do it in MS Paint or the program of your choice. If you want something more focused on pixel art (and still free) there's graphicsgale. Embrace the dots.

Hello everyone! after a couple of months of work on this beast of a thing, the first draft of my promised writeup on understanding composition is finally ready! This badboy is almost 15,000 words, and over 150 pages long. In these images, you can see a couple of examples of the kind of subject matter I’ll be covering, but it’s very comprehensive. 

This is currently available on my Patreon starting at just $2!

I think what I offer is a pretty unique take on composition, and it’s geared to be understood without a lot of consideration for the more finnicky technical elements of drawing, so if that’s part of art you have trouble with you might find some answers in my approach. Using my own art and examples from various disciplines and eras, I break down how to understand why a composition does - or doesn’t - work, all building to a toolset that lets you have control over your own compositions with precision and intent. 

A sincere thank you to anyone who takes the time to look at it, and at the end of the day, always remember one fundamental rule of art:

The Creator's Guide to Comics Devices is OPEN!!! comicsdevices.com

An online library of visual-narrative devices that are used in the medium of comics and other sequential art.

Happy Halloween! I'm really excited to be finally launching* what is maybe one of my most ambitious, largest work yet. This online library is the next phase of a research project that began in May 2020, when I first mused on how comics as a field doesn't have a resource that catalogues devices used in the medium. Like, theatre has devices, so does literature, and film! So why shouldn't comics? I always had an interest in comics studies and analysis. I love reading, making and thinking comics. However most of my knowledge was intuitive - I learned comics from osmosis and experience. This is true for many of my peers. Speaking about comics as a creator is hard, because we don't have a robust system of language. When we had to speak, many of us tend to reach for the language developed for film by film practitioners. If there is language specific to comics, it's either scattered in multiple blogs or hidden away in academic journals. The Comics Devices library is meant to aggregate everything and everybody into a single hub! After exploring some multiple resources, alongside some original, independent research, here is the first edition! * The Comics Devices project is still a work-in-progress! It's not final, nor will it ever be. This is why I am seeking contributors to help build this library. Translations, comics examples, etc. There is a lot of work to do! If you are interested, reply to this newsletter or submit an expression of interest on this page.  Have fun everyone!! (Now time for me to melt x_x)

also this guide from spongebob circulating on tumblr a while ago changed my brain permanently and these pages in particular are what I think back to the most

Just when you thought you knew everything about boobs… NSFW?

My darling friend Chizzi mentioned that there are a lot of booby tutorials out there are just predrawn boobs with the artist going HEY LOOK! HERE ARE SOME BOOBS! but not many that actually talk about the anatomical structure, and where to put the lines.  I was like, “Hey, I can probably whip something up.“  And so I spent my thanksgiving making this.

Proportions probably aren’t exact, but I did my best.  I also didn’t explore the various body types, but perhaps I could do a separate tutorial someday.  I hope you find this tutorial useful :)

All photo references used in the tutorial were found on The Drawing Script.  Credits to each photo belong to their respective owners.

official boob post

draw more fat characters ok. i love you

hey these are some tips for some of the little details in drawing fat folks that some people might not know!

everyone has fat on their bodies so its a worthwhile skill to have, but most art tutorials leave it out. heres some other good tips from artists!!

Also, please don't forget to draw fat necks. When I search for fat art, oftentimes the lack of a fat neck makes a character not look fat anymore because the artist basically just drew a skinny person from the shoulders up.

A resource I suggest is fatphotoref. You can also look at fat positive blogs for tons of photos and drawings that can help you learn how fat bodies look in different poses. Tags you can search on this blog include fat art, fatshion, fat athletes, and fat masc. Those tags are probably the best if you're wanting to use fatphobiabusters for pictures to help you learn how to draw fat people. Another tip I have heard a fat artist mention before is if you are fat yourself, use yourself as a reference photo. I hope this helps!

-Mod Worthy

somepony asked how i draw shoes & here is my thought process :)

some notes on drawing fat bodies in a stylized or cartoony art style! i tried to explain and illustrate things i keep in mind while drawing :)

And now for something no one asked for!! While warming up for drawing I got sidetracked listing and explaining my favourite art tricks and cheats. Things that I found made my life a lot easier, and my art better. So now I have a (very quickly and losely made) tutorial (?) of sorts.

So like, if you're in the market for some art advice, then I've got some for you!

Super 90s Carpet Brushes are live and alive on you-know-where!

A little different from what I usually make, and I had a lot of fun! Seven stock-retro brushes and three pre-made backgrounds. You can customize the gradient, manipulate the particle gap & size, and even toggle the glow on and off.

Free forever, have fun, Clip Studio only, etc, you can throw me tips for snacks & my electricity bill if you want.

Past brush sets for the Clip Studio gorls:

Even More Decoration Brushes | Some More Repeating Patterns | Ornate Decoration Brush Drop | Netting and Lines | Lip & Hair Gloss | Glitter & Sparkles | Destiny Brush Pack | Valentine’s Frame Set | Candy Coated Brush Drop | Bloody Throne Pack | Magic & Daggers Set | Tarot Pack Brushes (October Update) | Elfy Card Set | Big Ol’ Card Asset Drop | All Those Brushes

A couple people have asked me about coloring and such recently, so i thought i might crank out one of these tutorials!

Render, Shading, Color, Lineart