Tips / Suggestions for Digital Drawing

[jajimo]

First off, I've had lots of requests for tutorials and explainations of how I do my drawings, so I thought I'd make one thread and post some tips/suggestions!



Digital Drawing isn't graphic manipulation, and infact, there's no manipulation involved what-so-ever. It's just like drawing in real life, except you're using different tools. Think of it like when you write an essay or editorial for your local paper. How often do you grab a pen and some paper? Typing is just that much easier.

/hippie mode
You gotta transcend the boundaries, man!
/end hippie mode

With digital drawing, you're doing basically the same as if you had paper, except your pen/pencils/markers/paintbrushes aren't in your hand, instead you've got a mouse to control them. None-the-less, some people still prefer the old methods (in fact, I prefer them in some cases also, since digital drawing can be more time consuming in some aspects). The benefits are that you can undo easily, and you can undo several steps without having to erase large portions of your work. Which means you can try different styles and techniques without risk of ruining everything. Plus, you never have to run down to the art store to buy new pencils! Once you have the program you need, you're set!

So, on to the tips. I can't really offer a tutorial since I think that wouldn't help a whole lot, it'd just allow people to do one thing over and over. By offering tips and suggestions, I'm hoping to inspire people to try some new things and develop their own techniques/style. Just don't everyone jump on this bandwagon... this is my career we're talking about!

Simple drawing techniques:



First, I like to use the brush tool for all my drawings, it allows me to use multiple sizes and shapes to achieve the look I want. It's not always the most accurate, but it gets the job done. You'll notice all the red curves in the above pic. That's to demonstrate the basics of how I draw curves using the brush tool. With only 2 or 3 points, you can see that the black lines created by the brush tool don't follow the red curve very well. But when you expand it to 8 points, it's pretty damn close! The more points you have, the more accurate your curve will be. This doesn't just apply to tracing, whenever you draw a curve with the brush tool, you pretty much have to do it this way (not sure of any other methods with the brush tool).

Secondly, notice the two black curves, one zoomed in to 300% and the other zoomed out to 25%. When you draw curves and detail up close, you can make sure they look damn good (or close enough) at that distance. As long as distortion doesn't come into play, almost everything looks better at a distance. So if you create an image in high-resolution and zoom in, do your work there, and then zoom out/shrink it down for the final product, you're almost guaranteed to have it looking better.

Finally is the cell method at the bottom. This is a pretty good method, if it works for you. I've found the key is establishing land marks as reference points. Once you have something that you can reference distances to, you can duplicate it so it looks pretty close. Combine this with working in a high-res file and most people won't be able to tell the difference! The basics of this are to split your refence image up into small cells so that you gain a sort of coordinate system. It also helps you to establish reference points, so your proportions will all be close to perfect. The smaller your cells, the more accurate your drawing. Now, if you're REALLY good, your cells will all be 1x1 pixel, and your drawing will be verbatim =P

If you want to get advanced into cell method and save yourself some time, you can have variable sized cells. Small ones for detailed areas, large ones for undetailed areas.

Touching up your digital drawing:



If you can establish a sort of outline, like in step one, you're pretty much set. Basically what I've done here is just gone through and added highlights and shadows to everything at different steps. It's not as accurate as using cell method, but it can be faster and more enjoyable =)

That's all for now! I'll add more as it comes to me =P

[castback]

thanks man for all of that. normally if a post is that big i don't read it....but becuase it had your name infront i said why not.


now teach me how to use that crazy a$$ pen tool.

[jajimo]

I don't use pen tool! I use the brush! =P Ask omnicron, I think he might be able to help you =)

[KustmAce]

Very cool, can I put this in the Tut section?

PS: How about a write up about the lights too

[jajimo]

if you'd like =) The lights were tricky. I used asaenz tutorial as a guide but I really don't think they turned out good enough to be part of a tutorial =P