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WIP Subscriber Drawing Request Warrior Mouse 5


orphanlast

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Subscriber Drawing Request Warrior Mouse 5

Originally I was painting this thing out in Krita and I got sick and tired of dealing with the Limitations of Krita, so I decided that I should probably use something more professional, so I purchased Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer and I'm up and running to make some professional quality images. 

As soon as I understand Affinity Photo a bit more, I plan on teaching how to make composite images and such. 

 

 

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While I don't exactly agree with the opinion about Krita (to say it softly), I can see where you are coming from. If one enjoys a more image/editing approach for making an illustration, or even a comic coloring approach, you need selection power a lot more. Like you do need it in every in-depth image editing work. If you go the more painterly approach (Painter, Rebelle, Stormpaint, Art Rage, Krita... tho Art Rage has a lot more image editing functions, tho, of all that bunch, including Krita), you don't need it, at all.  This illustration could have been totally been made in a more painterly technique (you don't have selections when painting with real oils and acrylics over a real traditional canvas ;) ), and IMO, both techniques are perfectly correct. Vermeer and Velazquez did not use selections...

And yep, if you need even just something advanced with text, you will be lost in Krita, for now, till it evolves a bit more (I'm sure the plan is to evolve that tool quite). And a large collection of other things, as Krita is only a painter. You can do painterly with A. Photo and PS (well...somewhat, but it is possible), and do image editing as well. You'd better do paint-only projects with Krita, though. But man, the thing is 100% free, made by a very small team, and outstandingly young as a project, probably quite younger even than Affinity line. While PS has been here since always, they got room, human force, time and money to make a wondertastic app...

I for one prefer A. Photo, PSP or Photoshop for anything, including illustration, requiring even a small amount of image editing. As a painter tool, Krita is extremely capable. I like the video, and about building up a visitors base, it takes time, and probably external promotion actions (external to youtube) and also some internal promo. Plus... time, and videos, posted regularly, even if one per week, 2 weeks at max.

That said... for actual sketching, and for projects needing line art (comics or similar) I go all the way with Clip Studio Paint. I just have not seen anything better till date, very much including Photoshop, for that kind of control.  For painting directly, concept art and sketching, and even line art... Krita. For painting and illustration where one needs selections, and a ton of other image editing power, it'd be crazy not to use A. Photo....(or similar).

AD, AP and APub. V1.10.6 and V2.4 Windows 10 and Windows 11. 
Ryzen 9 3900X, 32 GB RAM,  RTX 3060 12GB, Wacom Intuos XL, Wacom L. Eizo ColorEdge CS 2420 monitor. Windows 10 Pro.
(Laptop) HP Omen 16-b1010ns 12700H, 32GB DDR5, nVidia RTX 3060 6GB + Huion Kamvas 22 pen display, Windows 11 Pro.

 

 

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Oh! Cool! A discussion! Sorry, tybing on my phone doesn't let me quote you properly.

 

>While I don't exactly agree with the opinion about Krita (to say it softly), I can see where you are coming from. 

 

I have an ecconomic computer. In the beginning of the video, you actually see me saving krita layers (super fast) into .png's and migrating the project over to Affinity Photo. I litterally waited 4 hours for Krita to keep up while I did something that should have taken 5 minutes. I had something like 15 layers and 4-5 none destructive layers in Krita. In Affinity Photo, I made 3 times the number of layers.

 

Ctrl+E wasn't working. My hypothesis is that I need to convert layers to raster (though they seem as if they're already rasters) in order to merge them... Not sure why, but I'm confident I can simplify the file THAT WAY. And don't get me wrong. The day previous, I made a "Channel Update" video where I discuss how I love Krita but how I need to move on to commercial software for some tasks. I love Krita, especially the Assistant tool. It'd be great to have it in Affinity photo. I REALLY hope they put it into Affinity Photo. I put it into the "feature request" area of the Forum.

 

>If one enjoys a more image/editing approach for making an illustration, or even a comic coloring approach, you need selection power a lot more. 

 

That... AND speedy fills and gradients. Krita doesn't do that. At least, not on my computer. Especially when I've been working with the program consistantly for an hour or two. Something about using Krita over time... It just gets slower and slower, and I suspect it doesn't entirely deal with the issue of the file getting larger. 

 

>Like you do need it in every in-depth image editing work. If you go the more painterly approach (Painter, Rebelle, Stormpaint, Art Rage, Krita... tho Art Rage has a lot more image editing functions, tho, of all that bunch, including Krita), you don't need it, at all.  

 

Yeah, but even still, you can paint something like hair, little tiny strands, and need to select it later even in the paiterly programs. But I get what you're getting at. 

 

As I see it, though, you shouldn't have to compromise too much.

 

>This illustration could have been totally been made in a more painterly technique (you don't have selections when painting with real oils and acrylics over a real traditional canvas 

 ), 

 

True, but I don't really enjoy painting on canvas. I enjoy drawing with a pencil and paper, but beyond that, I'd rather work digital.

 

>and IMO, both techniques are perfectly correct. 

 

True, I wouldn't snear at a nice canvas painting. Leonardo's work, for example. Top notch.

 

>Vermeer and Velazquez did not use selections...

 

No, but it can't be denied that being able to select and mask and such makes for a faster workflow. They worked in a completely different commercial capacity for a different time.

 

Concept artists are popping out a paining every 20 minutes and I'm trying to work up to that speed one day.

 

I don't just want to get into concept art, but I'd like to get into gallery art as well, cartoon background art, story boarding, and even 2D animation. 

 

When Blender 2.8 launches, I have a buddy that's eager to teach me 3D modeling and 3D animation. It'll have New-User-Friendly training wheels with 2.8. And I'm not all thrilled with the many different programs you'd need to buy just to get up and running with 3D. So Blender seems like the best option for a newbie. It's a one stop shop. And it's respected, and respectable.

 

> And yep, if you need even just something advanced with text, you will be lost in Krita, for now, till it evolves a bit more (I'm sure the plan is to evolve that tool quite). 

 

Oh yeah, I know that's part of their 5 year plan.

 

I've been able to make OKAY text for my youtube thumbnails with Krita up until now. Now I can just focus my efforts on APhoto and ADesigner for that. And already, I'm seeing a quality and speed increase with my thumbnail work. 

 

> And a large collection of other things, as Krita is only a painter. You can do painterly with A. Photo and PS (well...somewhat, but it is possible), 

 

My main gripes with these two programs A. Photo and PS is there's no perspective tools like the Krita Assistant tool. Yes you can transform things into perspective. That's cool. And I suspect I'll use that to a point. But I suspect that'll only make a good sketch that I'll have to move over to Krita or Sketchbook Pro to refine... And program swapping a layer around is tedious.

 

>and do image editing as well. 

 

And I love A. Photo for that. I loved composite images with photoshop. It was so fun. I can't wait 'till I get used to A. Photo so I can teach that. I'm a PS god. And I can't wait to get that good with A. Photo.

 

>You'd better do paint-only projects with Krita, though. 

 

Well, sketchbook pro is now free. And it has SOME of the perspective capabilities that Krita has. The fisheye grids in sketchbook are... Pathetic. I can only do cocave 5 point perspective with Sketchbook. Seriously, check out my curvilinear perspective playlist. I use nothing but Krita and it really shows how the Assistant tool in Krita is superior to anything in any other program... Don't know why... The code is open source. Anyone can peak and copy.

 

>But man, the thing is 100% free, made by a very small team, and outstandingly young as a project, probably quite younger even than Affinity line. While PS has been here since always, they got room, human force, time and money to make a wondertastic app...

 

I understand. I've just been talking up open source software for close to a year and a half. But I've never been afraid to mention a failing in any of the open source software. In the previous Subscriber Drawing Request video, I mentioned how I lost an hour's worth of work because Krita failed to save, and then the Autosave that probably presearved some of my work got overwritten... I understand it's free. I'm not asking for a refund or anything, lol. It's just that I have a weekly video deadline and it's hard to meet when the program starts to bog down and have saving and autosaving issues. 

 

It only happened once with the save -autosave issue, but still, I lost an hour. And the Krita guy on the Krita Subreddit doesn't see me as one big infomercial for Krita. I've made some cool professional images with Krita. And talked it up. It's a good program for a kid just starting out with a cheap graphics tablet who's parents don't have the money for software. That's been the target audience I've tried to attract (but it's mainly 25-30 year olds for some reason. But I still aim to attract the kids. I use Opentoonz for animating. I've even invested more than $1,000 in improving Opentoonz. And man hours creating a presentation for what will be a crowd fund to improve its GUI. I love Opensource stuff) but even still the videos where I leave a legit critique of Krita, the thread gets downvoted on the Krita Sub. I understand, I'm poking holes in a developer's pride. But it's not me being a dick. It's me saying "this is really irritating. It's a flaw". And when it deals with saves and autosave issues, it's a BIG flaw.

 

>I for one prefer A. Photo, PSP or Photoshop for anything, including illustration, requiring even a small amount of image editing. As a painter tool, Krita is extremely capable. 

 

Oh yeah. At the start of this video, the grayscale image -- that's all Krita, man. 

 

>I like the video, and about building up a visitors base, it takes time, and probably external promotion actions (external to youtube) and also some internal promo. 

 

Oh, believe me I'm trying with all that. Facebook groups, reddit subs, google plus communities, discord chats, this forum (now).

 

>Plus... time, and videos, posted regularly, even if one per week, 2 weeks at max.

 

Been doing that for close to a year and a half. Consistantly 2-3 a week.

 

> That said... for actual sketching, and for projects needing line art (comics or similar) I go all the way with Clip Studio Paint. 

 

Really? Hmm. I'm thinking Sketchbook pro, for me... Dunno, don't have TOO much experience with it. Then painting the pages in A. Photo and then adding the text bubbles in A. Designer.

 

>I just have not seen anything better till date, very much including Photoshop, for that kind of control.  For painting directly, concept art and sketching, and even line art... Krita. For painting and illustration where one needs selections, and a ton of other image editing power, it'd be crazy not to use A. Photo....(or similar).

 

:) A. Photo had me sold at 2/3ds or more of the Ps features for $50.

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Little forum advice.... : It is better to post in the standard font, not using one bigger.  Is just easier to read. Also, for quoting, you can just select the text, wait 1/2 a second -or more as am suspecting you have a PC with some issues- as a "Quote this" label appears, and you hit that label. So you get an easy way to reply in a quoted style. (or you can just select all text, paste in the the reply window, and go using the "" icon, to quote whatever the sentences). I get that you were using the phone, tho...

2 hours ago, orphanlast said:

I have an ecconomic computer.

This is the thing... I'd ask you the favor of uploading one  (forum attach feature) of the files you have issues with, one  that you don't mind uploading as has no secret stuff, or that you don't mind sharing at all, even if is not a drawing, but where you have the performance issues. I have used Krita quite, and while I know it has its performance issues, I have not found such show stoppers as in your case.

Your machine could be having a very small cpu cache (krita uses mostly CPU and CPU cache), or be super old or super low powered machine. OR, you could be doing something that creates a bottleneck (these tend to be very interesting to detect fro developers). Hard to say without experimenting with one of your files. Also, it is important that you'd be using Krita 4, it has been improved quite in performance, in auto save, now really happening in the background, etc. Were you using 4 or 3.x / 2.x ?

I do not experience those problems, even while I have a 9 year old computer, a core i7 860, 2.8 Ghz (stock), 3.46 Mhz turbo , 8 MB 1600Mhz RAM, GTX 275, HD sata Seagate Barracuda 1Tb , 7200 rpm. Which was a middle machine in its day, today beaten in single core by cheapo 2 core pentiums, among at some other departments . (but is still an i7 with 4 cores, 8 threads, and so beats cheap machines today in some stuff, like Blender's Cycles rendering)

Exactly... What machine are you using ? This counts a lot.

2 hours ago, orphanlast said:

I litterally waited 4 hours for Krita to keep up while I did something that should have taken 5 minutes. I had something like 15 layers and 4-5 none destructive layers in Krita. In Affinity Photo, I made 3 times the number of layers.

This is the most strange part. And reason why I'm really willing to check one file of yours that triggers this. Even if I detect it happening in my machine, I'll probably be able to tell you a workaround or trick. Anyway, look, I've worked as a concept artist and illustrator at several comapanies. The way you are illustrating is one of the possible ways , but not necessarily the best for art. You are doing a very image editing approach, which is even noticed in the result, and this is not necessarily good. Today, is much more valued a painterly approach. And with this I don't mean not to use image edit features. I'm talking here about style. And by using so much a selections based technique, you are forcing a specific "feel" that wont help you much in convincing certain high spheres, specially if planning to get into a company, as an artist (but neither helps for selling a good book cover!). Indeed, even in concept art, where is definitely seen with good eyes the use of textures and photos and photo montage, and photo editing tricks. Even there, they totally hide the editing traces, and don't rely that much in selections. There lies the difference between an artist and a photoshopping guy.... ( I wouldn't call my self a "Photoshop God", as I think you wrote about you, hehe, while you'd be surprised the amount of PS that one can learn using it as your main tool 24/7 since the year 1995. So, is not that I say this because I don't know well Photoshop... "au contraire". )

IMO, you should start a lot more thinking of painting with big brushes and less in profiling , bucket/gradient filling line art, more in "painting". I know is hard for someone who come from comic lineart and pencil and paper -I know as is where  I came from- but you need to check tuts about digital painting. But god ones, from high end  pros, not from others that are at your level or below (even if you think those are good ! ) at youtube. At that place there is a HUGE LOT of  non professional tuts ...

2 hours ago, orphanlast said:

Ctrl+E wasn't working. My hypothesis is that I need to convert layers to raster (though they seem as if they're already rasters) in order to merge them...

In a low powered machine I would not abuse of vector layers neither adjustment layers, that's for sure. But practically in any software....One of the reasons I'm very curious about checking one of the files you are having probs with...To help you and for  my own curiosity. Any performance warning from any user about my favorite programs (A. Photo, Krita, CSP) deserves my attention, as it could be true case, or a specific mix of bad luck, workflow, image size,  file specifics , and/or certain hardware.

All that said, IMO AP is better in performance than krita (but Krita is improving in that area, actively, I know from good source...). BTW, CSP (Clip Studio Paint, aka Manga Studio) is a ninja in performance. That thing deals with large files, many layers like if it were melted cheese. Still, again, NOT an image editor, NOT a Photoshop replacing.  Indeed, is workflow is very much thought for comics ! It has a superb inking/penciling feel. This is is a terribly common error people do with painting software. AP is an amazing image editor WITH painting features. Krita, Rebelle, Paintstorm, Art rage (well this latest covers a bit more fields now. But eons from what AP or PS do cover) are amazing painting tools.

2 hours ago, orphanlast said:

I love Krita, especially the Assistant tool. It'd be great to have it in Affinity photo. I REALLY hope they put it into Affinity Photo. I put it into the "feature request" area of the Forum.

I would recommend you then Lazy Nezumi Pro, but if you are having lag and performance issues with Krita, which I never experienced with this arcane machine (and remembering 3 high end projects where I should have noticed issues, if attending to the big size/scale matters), and still, I noticed lag with Nezumi combining it with several apps, not sure if is a good idea to point you in that direction. but it might work for you to use it with whatever the app. Try it.. It has very advanced assistants. But probably not Krita's level, also as IMO, is better an integrated solution, than having a tool that works externally with every software, but you might want to try the demo. Is dirty cheap, or used to be...

Even here... I'd say.. is best if you train your hand/eye/brain to not need so many assistants... People is kind of thinking they can skip more traditional skills than they should !.  (fatal error) Assistants are good, but it make you train less. IMO are good for speeding up once you are indeed able to do that fast by hand (you might even eliminate the necessity), but I wouldn't totally focus in its use, my 2c...of course, am all time thinking of digital painting, be it for illustration or concept art... For COLORING comic pages of inked art, that might be different. (I've done all of that, tho, I mean, paid to do all that, and more.)

2 hours ago, orphanlast said:

That... AND speedy fills and gradients. Krita doesn't do that. At least, not on my computer. Especially when I've been working with the program consistantly for an hour or two. Something about using Krita over time... It just gets slower and slower, and I suspect it doesn't entirely deal with the issue of the file getting larger. 

Again.. .a gradient is fine, but not so usual in a true digital paint approach.  What you solve with gradients and bucket fills, should instead be solved by big flat brushes and building  up with paint daubs, transparent brushes in some cases, of certain size, from bigger brush size to smaller(avoiding small brushes at start, at all costs).  And handling well opacity, painterly brushes, etc. Otherwise, it'd be reflected, the too much image-editing/filters approach, and the result will suffer...

2 hours ago, orphanlast said:

Yeah, but even still, you can paint something like hair, little tiny strands, and need to select it later even in the paiterly programs.

Thing is: You would go for over paint the hair with subtle light opacity, large brush, instead of applying a filter or color fill over a quick mask, color range, or worse, magic wand selection. You seem to be going for a very comic-page like approach, but you are talking about concept art, art in general, which would mean quite a different approach. "Painterly" means not going to the past, pre-computers era , means doing high quality digital painting, digital art. You would attract a lot more attention of game HR people by doing so than by filling a hair area with a gradient or even a plain bucket fill with later on applied filters or adjustment layers. You should not be doing photo retouch techniques, but painting techniques, IMO. Specially when handling a painting software like Krita. This is why you like much more A. Photo.(which is not superior to Krita in its brush engine, it is in photo retouch and image editing (is superior to most everything out there apart from PS)...because they are two different areas! Is like saying that Nadal is a better tennis player than Ronaldo. Yeah, but put 'em both to play soccer, u'll see). Of course, if your career path aims more to concept art, the photo techniques will be crucial. Although tons of concept artists just illustrate and don't rely in photo editing tricks. In illustration in general, you'd better off "painting" and not going for powerful selections and filters. Been many years at this...

That said, the digital painting techniques I am referring here... totally doable in AP.

 

3 hours ago, orphanlast said:

True, but I don't really enjoy painting on canvas. I enjoy drawing with a pencil and paper, but beyond that, I'd rather work digital.

Well, I enjoy both... but my comments go in the direction that most artists have taking to evolve in digital painting. You would see it easily in Corel Painter artists, more than in Photoshop artists. Still, these techniques can be used with both.

3 hours ago, orphanlast said:

No, but it can't be denied that being able to select and mask and such makes for a faster workflow. They worked in a completely different commercial capacity for a different time.

It depends on what you are after. If for comic pages coloring, what you describe is a total must. If for actual illustration and concept art, it depends. And for all what is not comic line art coloring, I'd recommend other techniques different to the ones you describe, that for sure. Even if those are very advanced and well done (most of us know all those pretty well, too, but they will leave you with a finishing style you might want to avoid)

3 hours ago, orphanlast said:

Concept artists are popping out a paining every 20 minutes and I'm trying to work up to that speed one day.

IF you are willing to become a video game concept artist (definitely not my best destination as an artist, but this is a very personal matter. Spoiler alert: I hate the video game industry now. With a passion. And I've covered (and be paid for) almost all game professional profiles.) , then,  lot of that is done by blocking first with large (HUGE) brushes, finding the right big structure with flat shapes/volumes (but first are shapes). Then you go detailing from there, typically, decreasing brush size in each concretion pass. Not going to details for a large while. You don't necessarily need even a single selection for that.

3 hours ago, orphanlast said:

I don't just want to get into concept art, but I'd like to get into gallery art as well, cartoon background art, story boarding, and even 2D animation

Gallery art as well... then is clear. You should think more in "painting", not so much in doing careful selections and filling those with gradients and bucket fills and applying later on filters and layer adjustments. My 2 cents of a sadly growing euro. So, the guys telling you those are NOT features needed for painting, are right. Still, as a freelancer, I'm cosntantly image editing, doing pixel push work, pixel art, retouch, etc, etc, etc. So in the end of the day, if your task is not 100% digital art, it pays quite well to have a global work horse. Reason why AP is always going to be a must. Or PS.

3 hours ago, orphanlast said:

When Blender 2.8 launches, I have a buddy that's eager to teach me 3D modeling and 3D animation. It'll have New-User-Friendly training wheels with 2.8. And I'm not all thrilled with the many different programs you'd need to buy just to get up and running with 3D. So Blender seems like the best option for a newbie. It's a one stop shop. And it's respected, and respectable.

I'm quite experienced with Blender and Blender Cycles. I still prefer more modeling with Wings3D, but that's probably counter productive, very old habit that became part of myself almost while at companies. Unlike you, I'm fine with jumping between programs, but if you know nothing about 3D, and have the luck of a very good friend teaching you, you should go all the way fully with Blender.  (or fully with 3DS Max, or fully Maya (ie, for an animation focus)) It pays well to full master a high end package in EVERY corner. You later on will port that knowledge to other packages.

2.8 is going to have an "easier" UI for people with zero experience in 3D. I certainly will disable any UI that simplifies stuff, but the software in general has become really powerful. It is a good bet. I learnt in companies first 3DS Studio for DOS (around 91 - 96, I believe, specially during a master after Fine Arts MFA), then Max 1 came and learnt that, was using that at companies till Max 8. Is pretty similar to today's, in the very basic core. Once you learn well a 3D tool, you get the grips of another very easily, or up to speed with new versions.

That said... it all depends on which are your personal aims. If you plan on getting a job in the industry (I'm far from wishing that anymore, 'cause I've worked at it, and didn't love the experience after 4 companies, learnt  there were better paths, for me, personally, for my own life, of course)    you'd be wasting time not using the real pro requested tools.  For concept, it should be one or a combination of:  Photoshop, Corel Painter, Sketchbook Pro, and total familiarity with Zbrush (this is a JOB BRINGER, both in games and the promising VR area (almost as promising as AI or big data, job-wise), skills are almost identical, so that's a plus. If you learn games, you learn VR, in graphics), as you will interact with  that a lot. But mostly, Photoshop+Zbrush, as concept artists are often requested to do more 2D work than just concept art, except at some good enough AAA companies. If willing to become a game modeler, you'll be requested texturing, too, and uv mapping, and the entire PBR workflow (really complex, even for a "pro" like me) for realistic materials and shaders making, so that he whatever engine will make a true PBR rendering, total must today in EVERY 2D/3D game or VR artist. This would need 3DS Max (I'd personally would choose Max for this profile...) or Maya, and a total need, Zbrush, and the Substance Painter and Substance Designer, or at least, one of them. Ideally, both. For landing in a very often posted job, get familiarity with Unity game engine art pipeline (not super simple). Indeed, if you get good in 2D animation, even if not frame by frame animator ninja, you should learn SPINE animation tool. Highly requested in job offers for UNITY based companies. For aiming higher, you wouldn't need Unity, tho (but one often needs to pick not always the very high end company job... ;). if like me, prefer to stay local, not become a nomad.).  For 3D animation, it's...Maya. Max can do, but I'd go Maya. And stuff like Motion Builder.  CAT or other advanced plugins if in Max.  There's a large area, VFX, that's mostly Houdini, but that's an entire whole other world, in which I cannot give any advice.

For no concept art neither modeling/animation jobs, but UI/UX, today you need Photoshop, of course, but also study quite some theory -read books and attend to commercial video tutorials, lessons- about UX, which is an entire world by itself. And surely get access to a Mac and learn deeply Sketch. Even if aiming for game jobs in UI matters. That stuff has spread like a virus, has not been restrained to the web/app development world....So much that I've preferred to move from UI designer to pure web developer (code).

So, sadly, for going to work at companies, specially triple A commercial games, you need to stick to PS (at least, keep up to date with new CC versions features: videos/tuts of new features, trials, etc), is what is gonna be used, and you need to keep totally familiar with it and its latest versions always. And going Blender would hurt you more than benefit you IF your only aim is to work at a game company, build a career there. If your plan is being a freelancer, that's a very tough option itself (freelancer), i should know, but then, Blender is the way to go for many reasons. Cinema 4D is being used by a bunch of middle size 2D/3D animation studios.But IMO, a much narrower number of job offers there. In the other side, kind of require from you less different profiles to master, if you get to be a really 2D or 3D animator. Just wanted to warn you: Saying that you totally master Blender is not gonna impress anybody in the high end game industry. Of course they'll consider it positively: knowing deeply any 3D package is a plus, but they know how different is the UI from any of the commercial ones. So much that you can easily move from Max to Maya and the other way round, not so fast from Blender to Max, for example. You would also probably want to aim to specific professional areas. Trying to cover a too wide area could be not the best idea. (ie, both concept/illustration/2D UI or graphic design area, AND all the huge 3D field..... ) That said, there are appearing more and more jobs for generalists, at the same pace than being requested super specialists in other places. Go guess.

3 hours ago, orphanlast said:

My main gripes with these two programs A. Photo and PS is there's no perspective tools like the Krita Assistant tool. Yes you can transform things into perspective. That's cool. And I suspect I'll use that to a point. But I suspect that'll only make a good sketch that I'll have to move over to Krita or Sketchbook Pro to refine... And program swapping a layer around is tedious.

Nobody needed in the huge game companies the perspective assistants, using PS, for decades, and they were and are amazing illustrators and concept artists.. .come to realize that... ;)

So, you can't say is a gripe of PS or AP, maybe need to start to admit that you "need" those assistants while other people don't... so, is not such a lack in PS, is just an advantage for new artists in Krita, provided by people, krita developers, who is focusing in helping in actual drawing and painting, more than in image editing (your approach).

What I'm sure the reddit krita guy did not take well is some assumptions... in some cases, you might lack yet the experience as to be so sure that a software tool is lacking... or just that you are using it in a very different way to what it has been planned to be used. ;)

3 hours ago, orphanlast said:

But I've never been afraid to mention a failing in any of the open source software.

That is the problem. That maybe, just maybe, not all what you see as a failure... is such. And that..,."maybe", ...your approach to concept art making is not perhaps the most usual or not even the most effective to get a royal piece of art to WOW certain professional audience...Or at least, not an experienced art director in a high end company.  Or not even "just" an experienced illustrator. While other techniques would very much put you in the right track (you seem to have solid drawing capabilities, and that's the part people can't hardly improvise, tho. Indeed, too many concept artist I've known are bad drawing anatomy, or having a too basic grasp of perspective. And a bunch are earning a salary... ! )

3 hours ago, orphanlast said:

I mentioned how I lost an hour's worth of work because Krita failed to save,

Version 3.x or v. 4.x ? Also, can be that you have a very slow, overloaded disk, or you defragmented your disk last time before the year 2000... OR... very little RAM... these are other reasons why am curious to check one of your critical files.

3 hours ago, orphanlast said:

It's a good program for a kid just starting out with a cheap graphics tablet who's parents don't have the money for software.

I beg to differ. Is a good enough program for any professional painter. See? an absolute statement... probably the Reddit guy did not like that , in the other direction/sense...  ;)

if you are going for REALLY learning software, you really really need to trash assumptions if you find issues in a workflow. As you will find HUGE obstacles while learning Blender, much bigger ones than any in AP, I guarantee that, then you are going to come to that conclusion much much faster. And blennder has a ton of issues, but also a ton of workarounds. I've earned nice bucks by using it. THAT makes a software professional. Even if, as all in life, has some lacks.

And the cheap or free tools are not just for kids. Are also for pros that want to optimize expenses everywhere, in every bill and area. And now you have the option of a Photoshop substitute like AP. But in the past, you really only had the option of CC or the CS suite before, and that was much more expensive. Back then, one even had to deal with Gimp and Inkscape (in way more spartan versions than today's), in a bunch of companies. So, nope, they are not for kids.. are usable tools, with a lot of lacks, of course.

3 hours ago, orphanlast said:

where I leave a legit critique of Krita,

In your shoes, I'd review my own software criticism a bit more, IMO... ;)

Still, I'd agree with some valid points: performance is a constant pending subject for Krita. Specially with certain number of layers in big files.  But the critique of not being a image editor, is not right, IMO. With that focus you could trash as well Rebelle 3.0, Paintstorm, Art Rage and even Corel Painter. And not only those should not really need to have (is just handy) image editing features, it usually is a bad path to go for that while illustrating. And all those apps are AMAZING for making illustration and concept art, I tell you.

3 hours ago, orphanlast said:

"this is really irritating. It's a flaw".

Hmmm... avoid irritation when finding a workflow issue, it ain't productive (same as in human relationships), is a bad habit... don't do the same thing over and over again, change the technique, find a workaround. Pro advice  :p. 90% of critics to software tools are due to the total inability of an user to adapt to a different UI and work philosophy than what they already know and are used to. But our brain is WAY more flexible than we pretend it to be. This is CRUCIAL for handling Blender (or Gimp/Inskcape) . If you are aiming to learn Blender, or 3D in general,this should be a key concept...Blender is very different to most UIs out there, for example.

3 hours ago, orphanlast said:

And when it deals with saves and autosave issues, it's a BIG flaw.

Again, 4 stable version has received improvements in that specific area, I'm curious to know if happened to you in 4.x.

3 hours ago, orphanlast said:

Really? Hmm. I'm thinking Sketchbook pro, for me... Dunno, don't have TOO much experience with it.

That is a very nice tool, with a great brush engine.The assistants are more than enough, there, BTW. Don't trust so much in assistants...In the good old days, a concept artist, to speed up, would build a 3D scene , fast grey boxes based scene/perspective and would draw/build over that, using that as your line assistants. Stupidly slow if one is not an experienced modeler, tho. Better bet is train your drawing capability to not need that. But this both in digital and traditional.

3 hours ago, orphanlast said:

Then painting the pages in A. Photo and then adding the text bubbles in A. Designer.

You could totally add the text bubbles in Photo. If for print, though, text goes better using only K, only pure black ink in a CMYK file. All what you describe is heading towards comic, though. And yep, for coloring only in comics, your selections path make total sense, is what is used. Again, totally different world from concept art and illustration, so I'm not sure what is the aimed field in your case.... 

3 hours ago, orphanlast said:

A. Photo had me sold at 2/3ds or more of the Ps features for $50.

Because you do art in a very "photoshoppy", image editing, photo retouch style. Not necessarily the best thing to do for concept art and illustration. But yep quite fine to work as a comic pages colorist.

AD, AP and APub. V1.10.6 and V2.4 Windows 10 and Windows 11. 
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Oh, when I wrote all that above (left it post later) had skipped the part about your accident in the video, just realized now... You should focus in recovering/health.... 

About followers. Is normal. Simply put, the vast majority of youtubers are after more mundane stuff. People interested in art techniques, or art making, a very small proportion. Your following is not small, anyway, for any youtube starter, even more the case for this theme.

About the art piece: I like a lot the kind of wall structures in the right side, that's pretty good. I wouldn't have chosen to put the lighting in a way that both character and enemy are in a total dark shadow, unless I'd have provided a very strong side lighting and some extra indirect illumination.

Avoid "blurring" too much, it gives a sense of dirty treatment and lack of definition.

If getting into concept art and general illustration, you'd have a very hard task to make: escape a bit from line-art. Is extremely difficulto for a comic artist, I had it very difficult, but can be done. Leaving line art for actual comic pages, or, art requested to have that very specific aesthetic,a nd...become a painter.. ! Is much more requested, and leads you to more realistic -even in total fantasy worlds- results. Realistic treatment does not mean automatically realism style (look at Pixar / Disney current movies)

I'd loose the line art by paint over, giving it a more "painted" touch everywhere. Seeing the lines on a finished concept art is going to be frowned upon by most art directors searching for a concept artist. they even know you should be only planting a rough sketch, even if ending up detailed, but not aiming for comic line-art. They actually look for painters. Just ones capable of working SUPER fast, and able to mix high quality (not bad JPGs) , stock photography (high end) with their over-painting, in a way where no one could tell a phot has been used.

This is A WAY to do it. Is better for the job, and your life, and all. The way I prefer is stupid, but I prefer it: Just painting fully everything, I'm an illustrator,m not a concept artist, tho. (but have acted like one, just working as if I were illustrating)

IMO, too much red in the illustration, and a very saturated red.... Is almost as a monochrome image turned to red and grey... think more in color. Possibly in real life colors might help you at start. Think always in real scenery, how lights and colors would be, each local color and how it'd be seen under certain ambience light, with secondary lights, etc.

The gun shot FX are well done, in comparison.

Other FX are well done, too, like the kind of joints in the snake body, through which energy is leaked.

The drawing does not seem to have big errors, and that's quite good news. But too much definition is lost when painting and blending/smudging, applying filters....

It is somehow undrstood that the scene is seen with a certain "lens", so there's accelerated perspective in the man-mouse, showing for this reason a larger leg.

That green and red combination in the snake... not very comvincing. Also, i would have added wrapping light, on major quantity, when approaching to outer contours of the snake body. 

I'm guessing the red high saturated circle in the floor is as all is receiving a spot light from above, red color, but is not explained fully, imo..... 

IMO, going more in the line of the walls at the right is good, specially if you end up loosing the contour ink lines, to do it more painterly.

I criticize so many things because is a good piece... with a bad illustration I could say nothing at all, as would be very hard to say sth to be improved other than tell the whoever to keep practicing...

You already surely got it with a technique based in comic line art, then... why not go for a more paint based path ? I can tell you can open much more both freelance and job oriented doors.  It doesn't hurt to learn such a good method. Indeed, it shares a lot with traditional painting, that is why many traditional painters very easily translate to digital painting. I was oils and acrylics painter, and a lot of stuff simply  applies !  

So, while I have not made a current, in depth study of what is best now to learn concept art (probably it'd need to go towards Gnome courses, or CGSociety , but never EVER feel overwhelmed by the quality of the high end PROS... ALL of them were at a point where they could not even draw hand correctly (and despite high salaries, some can't even, yet....)) but when I'm asked (which is not the case, sorry for all the non expected/non requested info) I tend to point towards certain site because I think this guys explains stuff well (not necessary the best or anything, but is quite good, an a lot of videos there, VERY ESSENTIAL, are free. ) :

https://www.ctrlpaint.com

Specifically :

https://www.ctrlpaint.com/library/

You might end, after watching and practicing the whole collection, you might wish to buy his advanced videos, tho.  :) 

I have NOT gone through his tutorials, but have seen enough to see how useful it can be.

And as for a reference of what I think is truly inspiring and very in the line of all what I am trying to transmit here with these two post, one of the best possible references (again, do NOT feel overwhelmed a single bit. We ALL need to be humble, and recon we aren't Gods, but at same time, neither feel it is an impossible path, because it only means we need to work more. )

http://www.goodbrush.com

Cheers, 

PD: Do not get frustrated with the Youtube thing. is normal. A kitty cat video might get a million views and the person just captured it with a cheapo cell phone while you did very hard work. The world works like that. Don't worry. One possible advice: Focus on your technical and professional improvement, and instead of wasting too many energies in "making videos", just let the videos be a "dump", a kind of log of your work. You can get same following if not more than considering the goal youtube itself. I'd change the aiming and focus to be the actual skills pursuit, and "vlog" it. Not even forcing your self an schedule, but trying ONE per week.  You can even just go saving nice moments, stages of your project, and then doing some video fast montage with a nice rights-free music as a background (voice over explaining only if you do that fast). You could maintain the suggestions format, but not depending on there having a suggestion, and then do your own idea if none comes one week. As you'd be training, the crowd might come, with time, is more of a resistance race, not a sprint. And sometimes, no luck even in long term. But only super viral stuff has better luck. People need to stop seeing in Youtube a way of life and solid possible main income, that only works for a very few, and more of an excellent promotional tool . 1k per video is A LOT OF PEOPLE, as a promotional tool (which also costed you zero bucks).

Oh, and not only Google is your friend. Balance is, too. Some drawing, some exercise (important for everyone, but even more for your total recovery) to recover, some social life. Nothing big is achieved without balance.  :)

AD, AP and APub. V1.10.6 and V2.4 Windows 10 and Windows 11. 
Ryzen 9 3900X, 32 GB RAM,  RTX 3060 12GB, Wacom Intuos XL, Wacom L. Eizo ColorEdge CS 2420 monitor. Windows 10 Pro.
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57 minutes ago, SrPx said:

I have a 9 year old computer, a core i7 860, 2.8 Ghz (stock), 3.46 Mhz turbo , 8 MB 1600Mhz RAM, GTX 275, HD sata Seagate Barracuda 1Tb , 7200 rpm. Which was a middle machine in its day, today beaten in single core by cheapo 2 core pentiums, among at some other departments . (but is still an i7 with 4 cores, 8 threads

I don't think any Core i7 is ever a "middle machine", especially if it's a quad core with a 7200 rpm (i.e. fast) HDD, but I'm speaking from the perspective of one who has mostly used Core i5 and Core i3 laptops in recent years.

 

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Edit: Ehm... removed the long answer, is off topic with the OP, and was not certainly a single sentence , and probably you might have read it... Summarizing, nope, in Windows, between a 1st gen i7 and a current 8th gen i7 (or the wondertastic AMD Ryzen 7 2500x) there is a world of difference , and for single core based apps -a majority, yet- even a i3 or i5 can be faster, in some cases, a modern pentium, too. It is relevant in the sense that I feel that one of the problems for the OP might a bit of an under powered machine... 

AD, AP and APub. V1.10.6 and V2.4 Windows 10 and Windows 11. 
Ryzen 9 3900X, 32 GB RAM,  RTX 3060 12GB, Wacom Intuos XL, Wacom L. Eizo ColorEdge CS 2420 monitor. Windows 10 Pro.
(Laptop) HP Omen 16-b1010ns 12700H, 32GB DDR5, nVidia RTX 3060 6GB + Huion Kamvas 22 pen display, Windows 11 Pro.

 

 

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About the Krita matter, I would suggest a read here, I just received a notice about this article, in a very unexpected way, freaking coincidence : 

https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/enhancing-user-experience-krita-application-utilizing-multiple-cores-on-intel-architecture?utm_source=LinkedIn.com&utm_medium=Social+Media&utm_campaign=KRITA_EMEA_Q1-18_Article-multi-core-opti2

In a VERY similar way to what is to come to Affinity, don't just give up on these tools (as obstacles, let me tell you, you're gonna find them constantly, no matter the software, Blender will make you grow a thicker skin more than with any other, you'll be fully immune after that, it makes you a Rocky Balboa of the UIs, haha. Oh, and same in emotional matter related to art, keep strong... :) ) . They have an extremely brilliant future: Affinity Photo, Designer, Publisher and Krita... (I'd add CSP and Art Rage, too, but I'll just shut up now)

AD, AP and APub. V1.10.6 and V2.4 Windows 10 and Windows 11. 
Ryzen 9 3900X, 32 GB RAM,  RTX 3060 12GB, Wacom Intuos XL, Wacom L. Eizo ColorEdge CS 2420 monitor. Windows 10 Pro.
(Laptop) HP Omen 16-b1010ns 12700H, 32GB DDR5, nVidia RTX 3060 6GB + Huion Kamvas 22 pen display, Windows 11 Pro.

 

 

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This is the thing... I'd ask you the favor of uploading one  (forum attach feature) of the files you have issues with, one  that you don't mind uploading as has no secret stuff, or that you don't mind sharing at all, even if is not a drawing, but where you have the performance issues. I have used Krita quite, and while I know it has its performance issues, I have not found such show stoppers as in your case.

Well yeah, I can mutilate a file and upload it, how do you want me to upload? It's a 136 MB file. I've gone ahead and uploaded it

 

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Your machine could be having a very small cpu cache (krita uses mostly CPU and CPU cache), or be super old or super low powered machine. OR, you could be doing something that creates a bottleneck (these tend to be very interesting to detect fro developers). Hard to say without experimenting with one of your files. Also, it is important that you'd be using Krita 4, it has been improved quite in performance, in auto save, now really happening in the background, etc. Were you using 4 or 3.x / 2.x ?

I'm using Krita 4. And yes, my computer is economic, cheap, not really impressive.

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I do not experience those problems, even while I have a 9 year old computer, a core i7 860, 2.8 Ghz (stock), 3.46 Mhz turbo , 8 MB 1600Mhz RAM, GTX 275, HD sata Seagate Barracuda 1Tb , 7200 rpm. Which was a middle machine in its day, today beaten in single core by cheapo 2 core pentiums, among at some other departments . (but is still an i7 with 4 cores, 8 threads, and so beats cheap machines today in some stuff, like Blender's Cycles rendering)

Exactly... What machine are you using ? This counts a lot.

It's an Asus. Intel i3-5010U 2.10 GHz, 6 GB RAM, 64 Bit, 

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This is the most strange part. And reason why I'm really willing to check one file of yours that triggers this. Even if I detect it happening in my machine, I'll probably be able to tell you a workaround or trick.

Well your processor IS better than mine. So far my channel has been centered on low cost. So my computer has been low cost.

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Anyway, look, I've worked as a concept artist and illustrator at several comapanies. The way you are illustrating is one of the possible ways , but not necessarily the best for art. You are doing a very image editing approach, which is even noticed in the result, and this is not necessarily good. Today, is much more valued a painterly approach. And with this I don't mean not to use image edit features. I'm talking here about style. And by using so much a selections based technique, you are forcing a specific "feel" that wont help you much in convincing certain high spheres, specially if planning to get into a company, as an artist (but neither helps for selling a good book cover!). Indeed, even in concept art, where is definitely seen with good eyes the use of textures and photos and photo montage, and photo editing tricks. Even there, they totally hide the editing traces, and don't rely that much in selections. There lies the difference between an artist and a photoshopping guy.... ( I wouldn't call my self a "Photoshop God", as I think you wrote about you, hehe, while you'd be surprised the amount of PS that one can learn using it as your main tool 24/7 since the year 1995. So, is not that I say this because I don't know well Photoshop... "au contraire". )

I'm very familiar with Photoshop and its various features. I've even made some tools for it with the action pallet: https://www.deviantart.com/art/ACTIONS-Augustine-Tools-191441357 

I'm actually hoping I might be able to do something similar with A Photo. I believe... they call it Macros...

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IMO, you should start a lot more thinking of painting with big brushes and less in profiling , bucket/gradient filling line art, more in "painting". I know is hard for someone who come from comic lineart and pencil and paper -I know as is where  I came from- but you need to check tuts about digital painting. But god ones, from high end  pros, not from others that are at your level or below (even if you think those are good ! ) at youtube. At that place there is a HUGE LOT of  non professional tuts ...


 

 

Yeah, I'm sure you mean like this 

and this:

 

 

In Krita, this was an impossible task, even a medium sized brush would lag out the entire system.

 

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In a low powered machine I would not abuse of vector layers neither adjustment layers, that's for sure.

Well I used a good number of adjustment layers. But as I understand it, every layer is treated like a smart object, and probably needs to be rasterized in A. Photo. And by and large I used masks a way of saving selections. THE way I know of so far in A Photo).

 

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All that said, IMO AP is better in performance than krita (but Krita is improving in that area, actively, I know from good source...). BTW, CSP (Clip Studio Paint, aka Manga Studio) is a ninja in performance. That thing deals with large files, many layers like if it were melted cheese. Still, again, NOT an image editor, NOT a Photoshop replacing.  Indeed, is workflow is very much thought for comics ! It has a superb inking/penciling feel. This is is a terribly common error people do with painting software. AP is an amazing image editor WITH painting features. Krita, Rebelle, Paintstorm, Art rage (well this latest covers a bit more fields now. But eons from what AP or PS do cover) are amazing painting tools.

Well, eventually, I supposed I'll get my hands on Clip Studio Paint. But at the moment, I just spend $200 on software. I'll be spending $1,000+ on a new computer. And an additional $300 on Cacani. And my channel has been centered on free and affordable stuff... An additional $200 isn't something that I am able to afford. Sketchbook Pro, Krita, and A. Photo should do the trick.
 

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I would recommend you then Lazy Nezumi Pro, but if you are having lag and performance issues with Krita, which I never experienced with this arcane machine (and remembering 3 high end projects where I should have noticed issues, if attending to the big size/scale matters), and still, I noticed lag with Nezumi combining it with several apps, not sure if is a good idea to point you in that direction.

I am familiar with the software, never used it. From what I understand it does brush stabilization and has perspective tools. I'm not sure how advanced the perspective tools are. But I'm sure for $5 it's worth it.

The thing is, Lazy Nexumi shouldn't be a scape goat for commercial software to NOT put in a stabilization options and perspective tools into their own program. But for right now, it's a competent ghetto rig for what software developers refuse to do for themselves.
 

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Even here... I'd say.. is best if you train your hand/eye/brain to not need so many assistants... People is kind of thinking they can skip more traditional skills than they should !

Drawing in perspective is a very traditional skill and lacking the proper perspective tools, such as an assistant tool is glossing over the traditional skills, relying on perspective transformations and photographs in order to make the perspective for them as a crutch. And I'm sure that's how using photo templates started, a lack of perspective tools in the software. There's nothing wrong with it. But I'm completely in agreement, people should know the traditional skills, like perspective. Thus it's best to have an assistant tool.

Although Kim Jung Gi is excellent at just eyeballing his perspective, that's a skill most people just don't have. And when working with a table top graphics tablet, it's not entirely always possible to just eyeball perspective without the necessary tools. And in my case, hardware also prevents me from even being able to see the vanishing point at all times because, in order to keep Krita from completely lagging out, being zoomed in at a comfortable level reduces the lag. 

I'm not really quite sure how I can understand that statement... the Assistant tools help create a traditional workflow when compared to Perspective transformations and  photo templates and etc. And quite a bit of the concept art that I'm seeing these days, without a photo template, are landscapes, because they don't have an assistant tool or a photo, showing that traditional skills are dying off.

And to keep a 4 Point Continuous Curvilinear Perspective image's continuity correct, it's best to have 6 fisheye perspective assistants, otherwise it becomes an ungodly mess.

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(fatal error) Assistants are good, but it make you train less.

I disagree. Without assistant tools, artists don't even bother learning perspective, something you kind of mention later on. And it sucks drawing pencil to Paper with a ruler. Assistant tools are the ideal way of drawing in perspective, especially if you need things measured out. And you WILL need at least somethings measured unless you want the pillars of buildings none aligned, A bench to be the size of a full grown person when measured to what it would be off in the distance. Things like that.

I've never studied perspective more than when I have assistant tools.

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IMO are good for speeding up once you are indeed able to do that fast by hand (you might even eliminate the necessity), but I wouldn't totally focus in its use, my 2c...of course, am all time thinking of digital painting, be it for illustration or concept art... For COLORING comic pages of inked art, that might be different. (I've done all of that, tho, I mean, paid to do all that, and more.) 

That's great and all but drawing in perspective IS the traditional form of an artists work. I don't have a screen tablet, so some of what you're suggesting isn't even possible, unless I get all of my perspective work PERFECT with a thumbnail first. An assistant tool is essential given some of the hardware at our disposal. I understand there's the phrase "It's not the tool, it's the person using it." but if you're using a tool that's not very good at a particular task then it's expected that the person using it will take longer to complete the task, especially if all the other tools require you to eyeball everything.

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Again.. .a gradient is fine, but not so usual in a true digital paint approach.  What you solve with gradients and bucket fills, should instead be solved by big flat brushes and building  up with paint daubs, transparent brushes in some cases, of certain size, from bigger brush size to smaller(avoiding small brushes at start, at all costs).  And handling well opacity, painterly brushes, etc. Otherwise, it'd be reflected, the too much image-editing/filters approach, and the result will suffer..

 

Okay, well there's a ton of different workflows that artists adopt, like this one.

 

After twelve minutes in, he does tons of selections and uses the fill tool. I know this because I've taken his Skillshare course. I'm interested in all sorts of different types of workflows. And the workflow you're describing sounds like the Proko and thumbnailing technique listed above. 

I DO feel I'm in a better place to do that type of workflow, now that I have Sketchbook Pro and A. Photo. And I'll be in an even BETTER position to use Krita in that workflow when I eventually purchase this newer computer. However, just by tinkering with this workflow, I don't find getting anatomy and poses its this techniques strong suite.

For example, I absolutely hate the pose and anatomy the final image in this video (just look at the thumbnail. Yeah... this workflow's good for environments. But look that this dude's torso in this thumnail his ribcage is all messed up. He has no calf. Something's wrong with his butt. The front of his neck makes the neck WAY too thick. The woman in the distance looks nice, but then again, she takes up less than a 10th of the pixels:

 

Also Keinan Lafferty even states that it's not for building good poses and anatomy. 

I'm not apposed to this workflow. In fact, I look forward to using it. But it seems like it DOES have weaknesses.

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Thing is: You would go for over paint the hair with subtle light opacity, large brush, instead of applying a filter or color fill over a quick mask, color range, or worse, magic wand selection. You seem to be going for a very comic-page like approach,


 

 

Well yeah, I'm starting to peak my head out from under the comic book page approach for the very first time, because I'm starting to adopt a very digital workflow and I'm now trying to build up my youtube channel.

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but you are talking about concept art, art in general, which would mean quite a different approach. "Painterly" means not going to the past, pre-computers era , means doing high quality digital painting, digital art. You would attract a lot more attention of game HR people by doing so than by filling a hair area with a gradient or even a plain bucket fill with later on applied filters or adjustment layers.

Destructive editing, is what you're saying. Only that usually means doing the same task multiple times. In my NobleFrugal Studio series, I draw out a rather large background and that's exactly what I had to do.

When I mentioned the hair I was more-so talking about refining the selection for the tiny strands of hair. Suppose you need to move the character and switch up the composition. Suppose your boss told you he wants it that way. In Krita, that would be impossible without some repainting.

But most selections should be done with a CTRL+Click on a layer and maybe a quick lasso to add or remove part of the selection.

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You should not be doing photo retouch techniques, but painting techniques, IMO. Specially when handling a painting software like Krita. This is why you like much more A. Photo.

Well -- I have more than 183 videos. A good chunk of them I'm using Krita. You tell me if I'm doing major photo editing techniques with Krita. Initially, sure, I was definitely treating it like photoshop. But then gradually loosened up so that I could actually get some work done. In the attached file (which took forever to mutilate for you btw, I used some gradient maps, but plenty or artists use gradient maps in coloring their grayscale images. 

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(which is not superior to Krita in its brush engine, it is in photo retouch and image editing (is superior to most everything out there apart from PS)...because they are two different areas! Is like saying that Nadal is a better tennis player than Ronaldo.

I'm not familiar with Sports references.

... I know what you're talking about. I've discussed it at length in my videos. 

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Of course, if your career path aims more to concept art, the photo techniques will be crucial. Although tons of concept artists just illustrate and don't rely in photo editing tricks. In illustration in general, you'd better off "painting" and not going for powerful selections and filters. Been many years at this...

Fair enough. I'm more interested in making a crap load of images. Creating an impressive portfolio that can land me in any of the areas that I'm interested in. If I approach a concept design job, I'll already have images for it. If I want a job doing comic book art, I have images for it. If I want a job in 2D animation, I'll have animations for it.

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Well, I enjoy both... but my comments go in the direction that most artists have taking to evolve in digital painting. You would see it easily in Corel Painter artists, more than in Photoshop artists. Still, these techniques can be used with both.

I'll look at some videos on Corel Painter then.

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  8 hours ago, orphanlast said:

No, but it can't be denied that being able to select and mask and such makes for a faster workflow. They worked in a completely different commercial capacity for a different time.

It depends on what you are after

Well, suppose you're painting an image that has a mountain, a tree, a bunch of walls going different directions.

 

Being able to quickly select each wall and applying a mask can quickly allow you to just paint instead of having to worry about if you're painting inside the lines. Same with the tree, after you're done painting the walls and the mountain, the tree, all its branches, and leaves, coloring it would be much easier if it's a mask is around the border of it so that you can just focus on the tree without having to worry about accidentally screwing up your work with the mountains and the walls. And sure, you can merge these things when you're done with them so that it's all on one layer.

 

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If for comic pages coloring, what you describe is a total must. If for actual illustration and concept art, it depends. And for all what is not comic line art coloring, I'd recommend other techniques different to the ones you describe, that for sure. Even if those are very advanced and well done (most of us know all those pretty well, too, but they will leave you with a finishing style you might want to avoid)

 

You have examples? Let's put it that way.

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IF you are willing to become a video game concept artist (definitely not my best destination as an artist, but this is a very personal matter. Spoiler alert: I hate the video game industry now. With a passion. And I've covered (and be paid for) almost all game professional profiles.) , then,  lot of that is done by blocking first with large (HUGE) brushes, finding the right big structure with flat shapes/volumes (but first are shapes). Then you go detailing from there, typically, decreasing brush size in each concretion pass. Not going to details for a large while. You don't necessarily need even a single selection for that.

Yeah, with what I've been liking up above with the Proko and Thumbnailing video, I'm sure I'm familiar with what you're talking about.

Okay, it took me a while to find this video again. But this dude is the best that I've seen at what you're describing. I would argue that this technique in this video isn't traditional techniques. He's stealing perspective from a photo:

 

 

But is guy also seems to do some line art at 56 minutes in:

 

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Gallery art as well... then is clear. You should think more in "painting", not so much in doing careful selections and filling those with gradients and bucket fills and applying later on filters and layer adjustments.

Thing is, right now, to keep my youtube channel going, I need to be a one man band. I need to make my concept art, I need to make the story board, I need to do my own animating. The entire production is made by me. I'm not QUITE at the stage where I'm working on a cartoon yet. I'm just doing art practices and trying out different workflows.

Just being able to refine the selection to be able to pick up things like hair. That tool. It makes it so that you don't spend hours making a careful selection. In the video in the OP, I really didn't do careful selections. I was just figuring out the selection tools. Still figuring out the selection tools. If making a decent selection takes more than 1 minute, which it shouldn't take even 1 minute, but if it takes more than a minute, then you don't have the selection tools you need. If you can't save selections in the Channels, you don't have the selection tools you need.

Just pressing CTRL and clicking on a layer and getting all the opaque layers -- that's a nice selection. Being able to merge your layers but saving a selection for later, that takes the speed of CTRL+Click, that's a nice selection.

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I'm quite experienced with Blender and Blender Cycles. I still prefer more modeling with Wings3D, but that's probably counter productive, very old habit that became part of myself almost while at companies. Unlike you, I'm fine with jumping between programs, but if you know nothing about 3D, and have the luck of a very good friend teaching you, you should go all the way fully with Blender.  (or fully with 3DS Max, or fully Maya (ie, for an animation focus)) It pays well to full master a high end package in EVERY corner. You later on will port that knowledge to other packages.

Financially going from Maya, to Zbrush, to some other program to pose and animate your character -- that's expensive. It's not a problem of jumping from program to program to complete tasks that's the problem. It's that the industry expects you to be made of money in order to work in the industry. Eventually you wind up using seriously out dated software and then you have to spend more than $2,000 just on software. Blender being a one stop show for everything a life saver, it's commercially supported, and the free price tag is appealing. 

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2.8 is going to have an "easier" UI for people with zero experience in 3D. I certainly will disable any UI that simplifies stuff, but the software in general has become really powerful. It is a good bet. I learnt in companies first 3DS Studio for DOS (around 91 - 96, I believe, specially during a master after Fine Arts MFA), then Max 1 came and learnt that, was using that at companies till Max 8. Is pretty similar to today's, in the very basic core. Once you learn well a 3D tool, you get the grips of another very easily, or up to speed with new versions.

That's good to know.

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That said... it all depends on which are your personal aims. If you plan on getting a job in the industry (I'm far from wishing that anymore, 'cause I've worked at it, and didn't love the experience after 4 companies, learnt  there were better paths, for me, personally, for my own life, of course)    you'd be wasting time not using the real pro requested tools.  For concept, it should be one or a combination of:  Photoshop, Corel Painter, Sketchbook Pro, and total familiarity with Zbrush (this is a JOB BRINGER, both in games and the promising VR area (almost as promising as AI or big data, job-wise), skills are almost identical, so that's a plus. If you learn games, you learn VR, in graphics), as you will interact with  that a lot. But mostly, Photoshop+Zbrush, as concept artists are often requested to do more 2D work than just concept art, except at some good enough AAA companies. If willing to become a game modeler, you'll be requested texturing, too, and uv mapping, and the entire PBR workflow (really complex, even for a "pro" like me) for realistic materials and shaders making, so that he whatever engine will make a true PBR rendering, total must today in EVERY 2D/3D game or VR artist. This would need 3DS Max (I'd personally would choose Max for this profile...) or Maya, and a total need, Zbrush, and the Substance Painter and Substance Designer, or at least, one of them. Ideally, both. For landing in a very often posted job, get familiarity with Unity game engine art pipeline (not super simple). Indeed, if you get good in 2D animation, even if not frame by frame animator ninja, you should learn SPINE animation tool. Highly requested in job offers for UNITY based companies. For aiming higher, you wouldn't need Unity, tho (but one often needs to pick not always the very high end company job... ;). if like me, prefer to stay local, not become a nomad.).  For 3D animation, it's...Maya. Max can do, but I'd go Maya. And stuff like Motion Builder.  CAT or other advanced plugins if in Max.  There's a large area, VFX, that's mostly Houdini, but that's an entire whole other world, in which I cannot give any advice.

For no concept art neither modeling/animation jobs, but UI/UX, today you need Photoshop, of course, but also study quite some theory -read books and attend to commercial video tutorials, lessons- about UX, which is an entire world by itself. And surely get access to a Mac and learn deeply Sketch. Even if aiming for game jobs in UI matters. That stuff has spread like a virus, has not been restrained to the web/app development world....So much that I've preferred to move from UI designer to pure web developer (code).

Right now, I'm more focused on learning to teach. Once I've made enough little indie projects I can start teaching on youtube.

My main focus right now is my youtube channel. And the software you've discussed is way too much money. The industry is way over bloated with one software for this, another for that, and another for this other thing. Just one piece of software should do the trick. And like you said, once you learn one piece of software, transitioning isn't too difficult. Like transitioning from Photoshop to A. Photo. I already know there's not going to be a very long learning period for me.

If my channel gets endorsed by photoshop, yeah sure, I'll use photoshop when they send me free copies of the software with an permanent license. The subscription based system they have is stupid and tells me Adobe needs to be replaced.

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So, sadly, for going to work at companies, specially triple A commercial games, you need to stick to PS (at least, keep up to date with new CC versions features: videos/tuts of new features, trials, etc), is what is gonna be used, and you need to keep totally familiar with it and its latest versions always.

I'm very familiar with Photoshop.

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And going Blender would hurt you more than benefit you IF your only aim is to work at a game company, build a career there. If your plan is being a freelancer, that's a very tough option itself (freelancer), i should know, but then, Blender is the way to go for many reasons.

As I see it, if I'm freelancing, how are they to what I'm animating with?

I'm interested in concept art and animation. I don't really care too much about entering into the Gaming industry itself. Gaming wasn't really one of the things I listed.

As far as freelancing goes, yeah -- it's tough but if I build my youtube audience up enough, have a number of products for sale, I won't necessarily have to depend on going from job to job. It'd be nice, but not necessary.

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Cinema 4D is being used by a bunch of middle size 2D/3D animation studios.But IMO, a much narrower number of job offers there. In the other side, kind of require from you less different profiles to master, if you get to be a really 2D or 3D animator. Just wanted to warn you: Saying that you totally master Blender is not gonna impress anybody in the high end game industry. Of course they'll consider it positively: knowing deeply any 3D package is a plus, but they know how different is the UI from any of the commercial ones. So much that you can easily move from Max to Maya and the other way round, not so fast from Blender to Max, for example. You would also probably want to aim to specific professional areas. Trying to cover a too wide area could be not the best idea. (ie, both concept/illustration/2D UI or graphic design area, AND all the huge 3D field..... ) That said, there are appearing more and more jobs for generalists, at the same pace than being requested super specialists in other places. Go guess.

 

I figure the Animation industry will want to see my animations. If they're good, they're good. If they don't want to hire me as a Freelancer, then that's cool. I can just focus on making more videos and products for my youtube channel.

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Nobody needed in the huge game companies the perspective assistants, using PS, for decades, and they were and are amazing illustrators and concept artists.. .come to realize that... ;)

So, you can't say is a gripe of PS or AP, maybe need to start to admit that you "need" those assistants while other people don't...

 

No, I just think depending on a photograph, or a rough 3D model, or perspective warps to do the heavy lifting with the perspective work on a 2D image is far from traditional, and learning the traditional techniques is something you mentioned earlier as something artists need to focus on, and it's amateur when they don't. 

Again, the background work that people make without an assistant tool without a photo, without a 3D model, and without perspective warps are typically landscapes rather than urban and city scapes, because they can't make a real looking city worth looking at, fudging their perspective work, breaking the traditional rules, and coming out with a semi wonky image. So even if they didn't originally steal from a photograph, they do it later on in the workflow to fix the mistakes that they couldn't fix by hand because they're either not very good or because there isn't an assistant tool. A work around doesn't make good on an absent tool especially when there's no reason why that tool wouldn't just be there to begin with.

And when was the last time you saw them making a panoramic image? Would that NOT be extremely helpful for a 3D modeler? That way you don't just give him a 60 degree cone of vision of a scene but the entire scene as a 360 image? I can do that, with an Assistant tool. I SERIOUSLY doubt anyone you've worked with have done that unless they stole a panoramic image off the internet and used it as a photo reference. 

 

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so, is not such a lack in PS, is just an advantage for new artists in Krita, provided by people, krita developers, who is focusing in helping in actual drawing and painting, more than in image editing (your approach).

When Image editing (photo compositing) there's no reason to use perspective tools. Because you're using 100% photos. It's the direct opposite actually. And when making an image with a 3D model template or a photo template or when bringing in photos when the image is nearly finished it's just to cover for the fact that there aren't any REAL perspective tools. It's bringing in the Image editing into your workflow rather than actually making a proper image with traditional techniques to begin with.

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What I'm sure the reddit krita guy did not take well is some assumptions... in some cases, you might lack yet the experience as to be so sure that a software tool is lacking... or just that you are using it in a very different way to what it has been planned to be used. ;)

Not being able to save your file when you click "SAVE" and having your autosave immediately get overwritten after you open your image isn't a failing on my part.

 
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  8 hours ago, orphanlast said:

But I've never been afraid to mention a failing in any of the open source software.

That is the problem. That maybe, just maybe, not all what you see as a failure... is such. And that..,."maybe", ...your approach to concept art making is not perhaps the most usual or not even the most effective to get a royal piece of art to WOW certain professional audience...Or at least, not an experienced art director in a high end company.

 

Not being able to save your file on occasion and having your autosave immediately get overwritten is an objective problem with a piece of software.

My workflow has somewhat been guided by my hardware which, remember, lags out pretty heavily sometimes. And even still, my workflow isn't too different from other profressionals, linked above.
 

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Or not even "just" an experienced illustrator. While other techniques would very much put you in the right track (you seem to have solid drawing capabilities, and that's the part people can't hardly improvise, tho. Indeed, too many concept artist I've known are bad drawing anatomy, or having a too basic grasp of perspective. And a bunch are earning a salary... ! )

I'm going through a variety or workflows.

 
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  8 hours ago, orphanlast said:

I mentioned how I lost an hour's worth of work because Krita failed to save,

Version 3.x or v. 4.x ? Also, can be that you have a very slow, overloaded disk, or you defragmented your disk last time before the year 2000... OR... very little RAM... these are other reasons why am curious to check one of your critical files.

4.0 and yup.

 

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I beg to differ. Is a good enough program for any professional painter. See? an absolute statement... probably the Reddit guy did not like that , in the other direction/sense...  ;)

I know. This dude's a professional using Krita. It's good for kids and parents that can't afford much but not limited to just that.

 

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if you are going for REALLY learning software, you really really need to trash assumptions if you find issues in a workflow. As you will find HUGE obstacles while learning Blender, much bigger ones than any in AP, I guarantee that, then you are going to come to that conclusion much much faster. And blennder has a ton of issues, but also a ton of workarounds. I've earned nice bucks by using it. THAT makes a software professional. Even if, as all in life, has some lacks.

I keep getting the impression that though I'll agree with you it's not registering, as if we're talking past each other for some reason... I agree, Krita is a solid program. But it's not fitting with every workflow that I'd like to do, especially the workflows you're mentioning on my hardware. It's like you expect me to have done every workflow humanly possible in one image. It's fine, I can take the critique, but some of what you're saying seems to be contradictory. You mention how Krita's a painter's tool, so it has an assistant tool. But Photoshop, even when used as a painter's tool, doesn't have a failing when it doesn't have an assistant tool. And it's actually my problem.

I suppose if I spent time getting the perspective right on a thumbnail first, I could get some moderately decent perspective, and use photos to improve it later on. But by and large, most concept artists seem to be relying on the photos too much. An assistant tool would do wonders to improve it.

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And the cheap or free tools are not just for kids. Are also for pros that want to optimize expenses everywhere, in every bill and area. And now you have the option of a Photoshop substitute like AP. But in the past, you really only had the option of CC or the CS suite before, and that was much more expensive. Back then, one even had to deal with Gimp and Inkscape (in way more spartan versions than today's), in a bunch of companies. So, nope, they are not for kids.. are usable tools, with a lot of lacks, of course.

... Again, my target audience (although it wound up being 25-30 year old people) has been towards kids with parents that can't afford much. So I've recommended Krita. I don't believe I've ever said that Krita is exclusively for kids. I did mention this in my previous message. I mentioned the kids because that's the audience I've been trying to attract. "Hey kids! You can get a $45 graphics tablet and a cheap freaking computer like mine and be up and running with a free program called Krita." But at this point, I want more than just a painter's program. But I'm still thinking of price. What can the kids buy? What can prepare the kids for the future? Even if in 20 years Adobe is still king of the Image Software industry, that's fine, Affinity will prepare them well enough to use Photoshop. I'm thinking like a teacher.  

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In your shoes, I'd review my own software criticism a bit more, IMO... ;)

Again, Krita failing to save a file after going File>save is an objective MAJOR problem. Even if it's a rare occurrence. Krita immediately saving over your autosave when opening your file Objectively defeats the purpose of an autosave. There's nothing wrong with the critique.

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Still, I'd agree with some valid points: performance is a constant pending subject for Krita. Specially with certain number of layers in big files.  But the critique of not being a image editor, is not right, IMO.

Okay, here's a previous video in the same series. Here's some interesting information about your feedback:

At 6:42 I say the following: "You can make a grayscale image with doing a bunch of line work the way that you see me doing it right now, I guess, but what seems like the most effective way is where you start out with a really big brush and you make some really appealing silhouettes. And once you accomplish that, you then start gradually making your brush smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller and refine the detail gradually as the brush gets smaller and smaller and smaller, until the brush is fairly small and you're actually doing your line work as the last step. And in the end it winds up having a lot more photo realism, and so I wish I did that approach at a gray scale image, rather than going after the line work first. But you know, we live and we learn." 

At 8:23 "... Seems like when you work with a big brush in krita, the whole computer lags out for every single brush stroke. So it just seems like I should get the thumbnail looking really good, and I actually initially tried to do silhouettes but I tried a particular work flow with it that didn't work for me. I tried the Silhouette thing initially... but crap happens. I should have just persisted until it started working for me. But I have to output a video every week, and sometimes that pressure kind of influences the workflow that I wind up doing. But that's fine because even still, that puts me into a position that I want to be in with this series, which is to be uncomfortable, and having a license to experiment. And sometimes that experiment becomes unpredictable. And that's fine. "

 At 7:56 "If you only draw things that make you feel comfortable, it's just because you're in a comfort zone and you're just using that comfort zone as a crutch and you're never going to get better. You need to be willing to experiment. Give yourself the license to experiment. And allow yourself to be scared about the outcome of an image. At least that's my opinion. I really believe that's a good way to look at your artwork and improve."

At 19:37 "Now some of the reason why, earlier on in the video, you didn't see me making a lot of selections is because in photoshop you're able to easily save your selection in the channels tab, which is connected to the layers panel." my main issue is not being able to save selection and not being able to refine your selection. Nothing having to do with "careful selections." You can use both of those techniques super fast in photoshop and AF. Being able to do this allows you to merge layers confidently without cluttering up your layers panel. And you're able to still keep the selection of a layer that no longer exists independently with a CTRL+Click. You save your selection with a CTRL+click. You retrieve your selection with a CTRL+click. I don't think there's any problem with that with a painterly workflow, masking stuff, even with tape on dried paint isn't unheard of. With all the links above, they're constantly making new layers. Well... I like to be a bit more organized. Once I finish something I like to sift through the layers, find out what makes what, merge them. Ctrl Click, fill in Channels, selection saved. Especially if I merged a layer into something something else and I later need to work on it independently. If the selection is saved, it doesn't matter if it's merged into another layer. But if you don't have a history brush, or even WITH a history brush, saving your selections isn't a bad idea. Because even though you're working destructively, you're still working selections that allows you to work on the various parts of your image if you've merged it into everything else.

23:26 "I know that Krita isn't geared towards just being a Photoshop clone. That's what it was initially, but eventually the team behind it wound up deciding that their main focus is making it the ultimate painting tool. And that's cool. I agree with them. That's an admirable persuite. I use the program for a reason. It's a great painting tool. But, there needs to me more none destructive editing things" like being able to save your selections. "Again there are things in Krita that are better than Photoshop".

 

 

 

 
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  8 hours ago, orphanlast said:

"this is really irritating. It's a flaw".

Hmmm... avoid irritation when finding a workflow issue, it ain't productive (same as in human relationships), is a bad habit... don't do the same thing over and over again, change the technique, find a workaround. Pro advice  :p. 90% of critics to software tools are due to the total inability of an user to adapt to a different UI and work philosophy than what they already know and are used to. But our brain is WAY more flexible than we pretend it to be. This is CRUCIAL for handling Blender (or Gimp/Inskcape) . If you are aiming to learn Blender, or 3D in general,this should be a key concept...Blender is very different to most UIs out there, for example.

  8 hours ago, orphanlast said:

And when it deals with saves and autosave issues, it's a BIG flaw.

Again, 4 stable version has received improvements in that specific area, I'm curious to know if happened to you in 4.x.

  8 hours ago, orphanlast said:

Really? Hmm. I'm thinking Sketchbook pro, for me... Dunno, don't have TOO much experience with it.

I understand the frustration bit, but not being able to save your file in Krita 4? Losing work? In a professional setting you have deadlines. Losing an hour's worth of work? That's an hour wasted that they'll either not pay you for or fire you for, or maybe you'll have to do at home.

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That is a very nice tool, with a great brush engine.The assistants are more than enough, there, BTW. Don't trust so much in assistants...In the good old days, a concept artist, to speed up, would build a 3D scene , fast grey boxes based scene/perspective and would draw/build over that, using that as your line assistants. Stupidly slow if one is not an experienced modeler, tho. Better bet is train your drawing capability to not need that. But this both in digital and traditional.

Well -- even with the Painterly workflow you're talking about, you lay down a dark gray blob, you use assistant tool to erase the edges of the blob to look like a gemetric shape. you CTRL+click the layer to select it. You get the selection tool and remove a few bits of the selection. Select a lighter value, and brush in with a feathered brush a nice gradient. And now you have a geometric shape with two sides, one in light, one in dark. I'm not talking about overly complex selections that take forever to make. And when using the big brush technique, you're still reshaping things all the time. Only with the assistant tool you'd be reshaping them more accurately into geometric shapes.

You don't even need to go that complex with the selection, you can draw a really thick line right next to the corner of a geometric shape, ctrl+click it, ctrl+shift+I for inverse and then brush in a gradient for the bright side of the geometric object. That way you're always using big brushes and not swapping it for the lasso. That way's probably actually faster. Then you delete these inverse-line-selection-layers.

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You could totally add the text bubbles in Photo. If for print, though, text goes better using only K, only pure black ink in a CMYK file. All what you describe is heading towards comic, though. And yep, for coloring only in comics, your selections path make total sense, is what is used. Again, totally different world from concept art and illustration, so I'm not sure what is the aimed field in your case.... 

There's nothing wrong with being well rounded. 

And designer just has a nice text bubble shape that you can use and reuse, and reshape different sizes. Seems like less work to me in designer. And yeah, I'm sort of working on a comic right now. I'm trying to nail down the story at the moment.

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Because you do art in a very "photoshoppy", image editing, photo retouch style. Not necessarily the best thing to do for concept art and illustration. But yep quite fine to work as a comic pages colorist.

Fair enough. I'm figuring it out. I'm getting well rounded. I'm trying out various workflows.

Mutilation.kra

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5 hours ago, orphanlast said:

It's an Asus. Intel i3-5010U 2.10 GHz, 6 GB RAM, 64 Bit, 

Hey, a bit in a rush right now, can't do the reply, will do tomorrow. But as i skimmed through some text already, to address a pair of questions....

What I meant with checking other youtube videos oneself for learning -as one can be teaching and still learning- what I meant is there are terrible ones, and yet very good ones, and stuff in the middle. But seen ppl follow some terrible tuts as if those were the best, and actually some create bad habits.

Concept art is an entire apart beast, very different to what I consider that requires more traditional skills. IMO, the right path is going from mastering the traditional skills of drawing and painting (including anatomy, composition, color, lighting, perspective, in the best way possible), as concept art is a very peculiar specialization that needs super high speed in production and that often skips finishing and and touches you would really do in, for example, an illustration, or a 6 feet wide oil canvas. 

Concept art aims to mostly get the fastest "global sensation, realistic looking, in the least amount of time" . I have done work like that and is not what I'm after... I've seen concept artists getting great pay in big companies that don't need to master those skills. Often many have terrible anatomy drawing issues. And use a ton of photos as support -and yep, to avoid perspective guessing, often, but they need to have a very solid knowledge of it, if they are usually very capable of something is of drawing perspective without any sort of help- . What i meant about assistants are a shortcut compared to traditional skills, is because when you PAINT an oils/acrylics picture, you often don't even have a ruler (aka assistant) of any kind, just paint by brain estimation, an a ton of practice. I learned so to paint. A step towards making that easier and avoid the extra effort, is using rulers (done so as needed for passing well exams for a admin vacant as a technical drawing teacher in my country, but later did not grab the job, long story. I made tons of perspective and all sort of other systems, in tech drawing, by hand and rulers, too) . And a next step is just paint over a 3D scene you bang first in Bledner/max, to speed up. Is a bit cheating, but when you  have a boss with his dragon breath on ur neck, is totally fine to use WHATEVeR, even photos to speed up. I only say I wouldn't take any shortcut BEFORE mastering the traditional skills, because lack of those reveals sooner or later in any sort of art, imo, but as all what I wrote, is just my opinion, no one needs to agree...Ideally, one should need to be able to draw anything with a charcoal and oils before getting into digital. In the US and canada, I'm told video game masters are more and more putting emphasis on this.. so, I might have a point.. I learnt when there were not a single digital tablet yet invented, so I kind of had that "advantage".

The technique I think you are showing me in several of these new videos, the things you might not like, can be a mix of: many of these guys are not super great at drawing, specially human figure, or just, is a must to draw so the sceneries and landscapes to get a big scene view in almost no time. The approach of large brush daubs and first paint in greyscale for focusing first in shapes, composition, lighting, value/contrast, yep, that was the clever approach for actual concept art which I was referring to. But careful, as there's some sort of vice created of abusing it, and stay in a diffuse definition, which ends in no specially good art, and a bit too "meh". A ton do just that. 

Anyhow, there are many approaches to do concept art. And as you mentioned your field is quite wider than just concept art, other techniques should be used and other detailing levels. I simply think is much better a pure painting technique, and not using selections,  neither filters or adjustment layers, even minimizing layers, ideally painting all in one layers (as you'd do in a canvas) The result will be better, most surely. I used to illustrate using all those other techniques in the past... But nothing is written in stone. If you are not willing to change your technique, that is totally fine, it was only a bit of an opinion, no more.

About the quantity of portfolio... hmmmm... I'm more of the line of though of better few very good, than a ton that any HR person wont care to look after finding a just average quality sample. I've seen that inside a bunch of companies (worked at ten). But again, you seem to enjoy the proccess, and working is the way to learn, anyway.

The CPU is under powered, yep. I'd go for putting the bucks there before than in any software or tutorial, or promo resource.  The cpu is one of the U series, a way that intel has to put very underpowered models inside a specific gamma. In this case, even already in the lower gamma of the cores, the i3. You only have 2 cores (krita's intel  anouncement I believe is indeed using the multicore to get much better performance) and 4 threads. Only 2.1 mhz, no turbo (my old one is 2.8 and turbo 3.46) which is pretty low, and even more, speeds are not comparable: A core i5 can be much faster than a i3 at lower clock speed, as a ton other things vary, too. MY arcane old cr4p has 8 mb of cpu cache, while yours is 3, and I believe one of the most important matters for large brushes in Krita is CPU cache....is what it can fit as a chunk of pixels at a time.... And ram is 6, not 8, probably the machien is using an integrated card, not dedicated, and is probably a laptop, and the problem with most (in PC/windows at least) laptops is, not enough refrigeration due to space often forces companies to make less performing pieces even at same specs... So, it's indeed heroic that you get to do all what you do with a amchine of these specs. All what I'm saying is that I'd have that priority, update the machine. Even mine is slowing me upa lot at the  time of working in any image making area.

Anyhow, I know I left a ton of stuff out and only skimmed your whole text. Even I wrote more than I planned for a first fast reply I planned here. I'll read it full tomorrow, will reply the bits that might have left pending.

Edit: nothing of what i mention is nitpicking on your workflow, each one has his/her own. I only say what i would have liked to know when I dedicated too much time, years, in illustrating by using tons of layers, selections, filters, gradients, etc, instead of relying more in pure painting, as I indeed already knew how to do in traditional, and that would have ended in better results. But each one is different, maybe doing so for you wouldn't be the best path,  I dunno. Also, my statement on the use of assistants, is not really accurate (if anything, that traditional painting is very good to master), as tablets, and even much more noticeable with low powered computers, are a bad joke in accuracy in line jitter and etc, compared to your real hand in a traditional pen and paper or brush and canvas. SO, line stabilizers and rule assistants are almost a must in certain cases until tablets get much better. This is minimized a bit with GOOD, large pen-displays (Cintiq, etc), but not even I am going to put 3k $ in a pen display any time soon.

 

AD, AP and APub. V1.10.6 and V2.4 Windows 10 and Windows 11. 
Ryzen 9 3900X, 32 GB RAM,  RTX 3060 12GB, Wacom Intuos XL, Wacom L. Eizo ColorEdge CS 2420 monitor. Windows 10 Pro.
(Laptop) HP Omen 16-b1010ns 12700H, 32GB DDR5, nVidia RTX 3060 6GB + Huion Kamvas 22 pen display, Windows 11 Pro.

 

 

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BTW, seems you are into 2D frame by frame animation. Have you tried https://animationpaper.com  ?

Sorry if you knew it very well.

It is free. I believe they were preparing an incredibly better version. Not sure if released the new one. 

I'm not that much about 2D anim (have needed to do a bit of it at jobs eventually ,tho)

There's also one that used to be a crash fest, but been told it has improved wildly: Synfig. vector based, might do inbetweening, dunno, might wanna check. Free, too.

https://www.synfig.org

I' be to think first one is for a more traditional approach, and maybe higher quality (in its days had it's rare crashes, too). But the second has other important advantages. In case you don't already know them, I'd check both.Have heard many good things about the first one, and that the second is having a really good developer behind, now.

AD, AP and APub. V1.10.6 and V2.4 Windows 10 and Windows 11. 
Ryzen 9 3900X, 32 GB RAM,  RTX 3060 12GB, Wacom Intuos XL, Wacom L. Eizo ColorEdge CS 2420 monitor. Windows 10 Pro.
(Laptop) HP Omen 16-b1010ns 12700H, 32GB DDR5, nVidia RTX 3060 6GB + Huion Kamvas 22 pen display, Windows 11 Pro.

 

 

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BTW, the file runs well in Krita, in my machine.... :s

AD, AP and APub. V1.10.6 and V2.4 Windows 10 and Windows 11. 
Ryzen 9 3900X, 32 GB RAM,  RTX 3060 12GB, Wacom Intuos XL, Wacom L. Eizo ColorEdge CS 2420 monitor. Windows 10 Pro.
(Laptop) HP Omen 16-b1010ns 12700H, 32GB DDR5, nVidia RTX 3060 6GB + Huion Kamvas 22 pen display, Windows 11 Pro.

 

 

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Sorry, I was a bit tired, and my text surely contained a lot of typos, bad grammar/expression, it could have been summarized and maybe I did not make much sense...

About the bits pending, not sure if those two first videos you posted them as good or bad tuts examples.

The first one is speaking about building with light/shadows, values, actual volumes, kind of sculpting with  the brush, and he is teaching caricature drawing.

Not specially interesting for this matter, but it is in the fact that well, one can do it better or worse, but thinking in "3D" while drawing, and doing it in greyscale is a very old traditional technique. Is like any other approach, has its pros and cons. For concept art, specially landscape, and structures, it has solid advantages, but a color-from-the-start approach will have other pros. My main point was more in the painting technique: biig blocks first. true that you are limited by your  machine, BUT.... if that's the case, one dirty trick you can very well use is painting  that in very low resolution, like in a 1200px wide image, desktop size, as this is only a mere composition initial planting of masses. And when you get to a point your are refining, and gradually using smaller brushes, specially when you are in a detailing level, scale up the drawing, as you wont be using large brushes anymore, surely. This way the machine wont be a prob, IMO.

The second video is very good for the case, IMO. They are actually doing this of drawing in small. I probably wouldn't carry it too far, although I can see how this way they can "brainstorm" visually very fast. They don't get married to a first idea, and they are all time comparing visually several different compositions. Working in scale, they are actually working with HUGE brushes, because each scene is tiny, but they are defining an entire mountain with a single brush splat. Of course, its easier to do so with mountains than with a high tech futuristic building, but you could very well have built that wall you made by painting by large flat brush splats, building that sensation of a wall... One thing I left out: Too much detail in the background sometimes is not convenient. Is still good what you did, but lousy, large paint daubs like  they make, even if detailing quite, help that sense of distance and lower detail, of atmosphere. My main point is I think is a general better approach than very refinined and cleaned line art, unless you are actually making a comic. And you use a lot of time in the selections with krita, with PS would be long, too. While you could have done the thumbnail tech (maybe you are suggestiing you were thinking od doing so, to, when showing me that video) as then the brush size is not a prob, and once you scale up, you have that full structure planted, only need to refine some spots, not all, those that make the brain feel as enough to "feel" detailed. You do not need to detail every single thing in a same level. Just enough for the brain to understand (this would be easier explained by painting than with words...)

The  thumbnailing technique, they explain it as the most convenient to use well your time, plant fast a set of brainstortmed visual possibiities, for you to see several possibilities, and for your boss and rest of the team to have the options. It helps you tons as it is deciding stuff than if not done first, doing those decisions later when the drawing is advanced, is complicated and a waste of time. In your case, is almost the only way to go in this style of large blocks which is so fast and so convenient, as your machine, surely for the small cpu cache, and other matters, in Krita can't do larger brushes. But as I say, by doing a main compsition in small,then scaling up, the machine should have zero probs.

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In Krita, this was an impossible task, even a medium sized brush would lag out the entire system.

That 2nd tut is really good, and done by pros. But my proposal, and you make what ever you'll desire of it, is, doing a single thumbnail, meaning, even larger, kind of almost all screen, but not as for press, not 300 dpi, not a 5000x5000 pixels. Whatever works well in that machine. Can be even a single small image at 1.000 pixels wide, also you can zoom-in a bit for easier work, at this point if you see a bit the pixel, no biggie (never hurts me, I'm a pixel art artist in games, I don't mind seen big pixels from time to time). The "large brushes", as the image is so small, will be in absolute terms pretty small, yet covering a large part of the image. Remember: you can, maybe should, worked in zoomed in, so that you see the entire desktop filled with your scenario. if hate seeing the pixels, work in thumbnail mode like them, is even good to forget about detailing in this stage, as is a bit your enemy in first stage.

Then, of course, use ONLY one layer. You can very well this entire exercise using ONLY ONE layer, is indeed god, because tehn you train more painting, and less image manipulation. you don't need image manipulation tricks for this, _at all_. Not even in later stages, and IMO, those make more harm than good. For very fast paced environment, maybe, but for building a portfolio... unless you aim a studio that is very much into photo compositing.... Plus, you know how to do that already, is more interesting to learn the other way.

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Well I used a good number of adjustment layers. But as I understand it, every layer is treated like a smart object, and probably needs to be rasterized in A. Photo. And by and large I used masks a way of saving selections. THE way I know of so far in A Photo).

I'd give it a try to not use selections, neither adjustment layers, and just paint by large blocks, large brushes, even if you need to do so in small canvas size, then up-scale for detailing and final product. It'd pay well in the long run....Again, you only need one layer. A bunch of very pro people I've talked with using very few layers, or only one (my case indeed) always that they can.

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Well, eventually, I supposed I'll get my hands on Clip Studio Paint.

Its main advantage is a superb ink and pencil feel, stabilization of the line is not from  this world, too. The oil brush is very good, even if does not try to mimic the "3d texture" of a very dense oil daub, but I don't like that much when Painter or Art Rage do that, as.... is a fake, anyway, the printer wont show the 3D blobs, and is constraining to a light source direction ofr those blobs, etc. Also is extremely good the customization of each tool. And the performance is very good. But you can do very well with almost any painting software out there, including A. Photo (which is not a painting software). I'd save my bucks for now to go adding for a bit more powerful machine.

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 I'll be spending $1,000+ on a new computer.

wow. No need that much, u can add some parts later...Dunno in your area, but in my country, which has very similar prices than the US, indeed, a bit more expensive, you can just get :

-No monitor, as you have already one, and we're only talking about the performance issue, a Ryzen 7 (8 cores, 16 threads! ) 2700 (I'd go for the 2700x, but is constantly out of stock, everybody wants it, is fine to make a rough estimation, and the 2700 is very good, too, though 500mhz of difference in stock speed) . Enoughcpu cache. 8 mb ram 2400 mhz (you can add more later easily, I'd recommend 16). Just a HD seagate barracuda 7200 rpm, mother board B350, not going too low, to a A320, as that can be limitng later on. Box, well, with a 600W power supply, passive, should be enough. (so, still around 15 euros more than a basic one with a 500w). Card... g. cards are a case of extorsion now due to the bitcoin mining. bad time to buy a high end of those. So, a 1030 from nvidia has quite some of the needed shaders (Blender would benefit from a better card, specially Eve, but...not a show stopper, IMO). This card even can be used for playing e-sports games (but one's better not playing too much... ;) ). It has 2GB, enough for a while... if the mining stuff changes, will be a time to buy sth better. You don't need anything else (speakers, mouse, keyboard, will just use your current ones)

That all is about 668 euros, if you go to the right shop.

Even more, if wanna buy sth you can easily upgrade later, but prefer to buy in chunks, less money at a time, you can go for a  2400G. It would be with Vega  integrated card, which is quite good, better than intel's solution for integrated, and the micro is still powerful, 4 cores and 8 threads (like a  non 8th gen intel i7 ) : - cpu 2400G (4c/8t 3.6ghz/3,9ghz but the pitty is the cpu cache, smaller). This removes the need of buy a graphic card for th emoment, and also, removes -149 euros from the total. That card is cheap, but still was 89 euros. So, is only 443 euros instead of 681, and we're still talking about a machine quite better than your current, and easily upgradable. IE, first upgrade would be the cpu, maybe then +8 ram, maybe once prices have stopped being crazy for cars, a g.card. Is not the same to put together 1000$ than in chunks of 100 - 300.

Similar than if you go the intel way (my issue with that is that rendering really benefit from more cores, and the 2700x, the ONE I recommend you, not the 2700 is a must, while coffee lake can only provide you with 6 cores, and latest 2700x has nothing to envy (except for very hardcore gamers who risk the machine overclocking it), and the upgrade path of coffee lake is non existent, you get a 8700k and that's it) you can get both solutions, the expensive or one you can upgrade later (but not past a 8700k). Reasons for going intel: more time in the market, software is more prepared for it. I'll go Ryzen, tho!. Another one, that the yesterday announced Intel improvement for Krita means it uses multiple cores for brushes, but I understood is using a specific Intel cpu feature, so, it's an intel who would use it.  In intel, if you go the cheap mode first, you can get a 4c/4t cpu for very cheap, is still 2 cores more than what you havenow, but not more threads. Of course, much better trheads than your current ones. This would be an i3 8100. here a b250 (differtent family than a b350 for AMD) mother board would suffice. Here, even with a good hi quality board, a z370 for intel, you can get the whole thing for 410 euros. Going for the top of the line (the one who would compete in price and all with AMD's 2700x) ,the core i7 8700k, you can also get it a bit cheaper, 645 euros. I wouldn't go to save some tiny euros here, as I''d be loosing 2 cores, and benchmarks have tested AMD's 2700X to be better performing in Blender cycles render than 8700k's. That said, the 4 possibilities, the 4 machines, are pretty good ones.

Today the euro is pretty low, btw. And consider Newegg, the place you US ppl buy your PC stuff by parts, tends to be way cheaper than the prices I get locally in my country. So, 807$ for a ryzen 2700x, 786 $ for a ryzen 2700, 511$ for a ryzen 2400G, 741$ for the intel core i7 8700k, 473 $ for an intel core i3 8100 would still be quite pricey compared to Newegg prices in your country (I assumed US for the accent).

So...unless you have an OEM version of Windows, so that you cannot install it on a new computer, as in this case, you need to put +135 euros (in my country) for it, you don't get even close to 1000$, even less if you first purchase the cheap option. The only bad thing (besides quite less performance first) is that is hard to sell second hand a cheap cpu even just a year after. Unless you find some1 really wanting to buy sth outdated and is in need of using really few bucks. (I sold my cintiq 12" for 1/3 the price just some months after...tho also as was a good friend...). My best advice is going for the 2700x from AMD.

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And an additional $300 on Cacani

I don't fully get this... There are a bunch of free or cheaper animation tools...

Have seen the oficial videos, nothing that much justifying the price compared to other options... I'd seriously test the one I mentioned, Animation paper.(and synfig does a bunch of the things cacani seem to do). Those are free, but even if willing to spend 300$ bucks for whatever the reason, I'd go spine... is not frame by frame (for that Animation Paper is great, IMO)  but is a job bringer. A lot of companies are requesting knowledge in Spine, even if is focused on games, skeletal animation and animation per sprite parts, for game optimization, but is highly requested. Is a job profile. For my own indy stuff, I don't see the point. You go better with Animation Paper + Synfig, and if anything, getting to master Blender, to a point you can even do character animation gives u a ton of possibilities. This is a extremely long path: I can now do that, but you need first to learn ALL modeling, uv mapping, texturing, animation, toon rendering, and of course, general Blender usage. But for Indy stuff I see it great. I'd be to think 3D animation is more future proof, but in the moment, animating in 2D in pieces/bones has its place in Unity game engine companies (small/mid size, there are many out there). I've recommended you better focusing in a single field, wont do it again... ;)

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And my channel has been centered on free and affordable stuff

Then extreme reasons to go Animation Paper + Synfig ! Not only for you to focus ALL remaining bucks now in the machine, forget putting more bucks in software, unless is -imo- in Affinity (as is very versatile, open many fields at a time) , or "job bringers" as I call them : Spine, Zbrush, Substance Painter and Substan Designer. (even each one alone brings you job possibilities in its own)

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Sketchbook Pro, Krita, and A. Photo

Yup. If anything, I'd add A. Designer (not because we're in this forum! I don't get a coin for recommending it, but I have it) if want for example a vector based solution to export to vector based (Adobe Animate (aka ""Flash", Synfyg, etc) animation packages, or for graphic design gigs requiring vectors. A lot of ppl used to go Illustrator first, and export for animation in Flash. But later Flash got so good that some eliminated the Illustrator step.

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I am familiar with the software, never used it.

I've tried Nezumi, and personally...is not for me, definitely.It lagged in my tests, and that's rare for any software here.  While I like Krita's assistants. I thought I'd mention as a remarkable option, tho.

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Drawing in perspective is a very traditional skill and lacking the proper perspective tools, 

I think I addressed in my most recent post, but to clarify it totally: Is still more traditional, and trains you better to not even use rulers of any kind, and of course, neither photos/3d for trace/overlay. I was talking about making it totally without ANY kind of help, just training and the brain/hand. Usual thing for any oil/acrylics on canvas painter. Just on the computer.

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 But I'm completely in agreement, people should know the traditional skills, like perspective. 

We're on the same page, then :) B|

Anyhow, once gotten the skills, anything that helps you is a winner addition. Be it 3D as a base, photo references or assistants. What i see often and i dislike, is people tracing stuff they yet don't know how to draw and paint without a ton of digital helpers. My 2c. (not saying is your case, you seem to have solid drawing, at least in that mouse example)

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Although Kim Jung Gi is excellent at just eyeballing his perspective, that's a skill most people just don't have

Yeah, sadly. Even much more noticeably and dramatic, neither good anatomy/proportions drawing skills and training. That's really really bad. You can very easily, very fast, trash entire portfolios just with that, when looking at a ton of CVs. one of the reasons I KNOW a portfolio is not abaout quantity. Is about quality. Put sth showing weakness and you're out. Put a few of your best (what is good is to show VARIETY, not quantity) and you will be surely in, sooner or later.

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 I don't have a screen tablet, 

Not as fan of them as I was before... I believe there's ergonomic issues, talked about it with ppl owning one...specially people like me dedicating most of the day to drawing...And I kind of like to put myself quite far from the screen, and back totally straight...Plus, I got it in terms of pencil/ink jitter and firm line, finally. I thought was thanks to Clip Paint Studio, but it just helped me to reach there (as it does minimize the tablets INACCURACY), I'm realizing in digital now I have much of a better firm line, no matter what software. It's training. That said,our hands, with traditional ink and paper have NOT these issues. This magnetic thing, tablets, are FAR from human accuracy, yet...I tested it very carefully.

Might sound funny, but I might buy one for not the  usual reasons: Not to enjoy better (as is fun for 2 hours, then there's ergonomics issues), or for more line control (although gives "some" more control, but I've watched MANY videos of ppl not having yet a good inking line to put jitter by their own hand, not tabelt's fault, while using a good pen-display), but because lately, tho yet only in the 16 " models, the chinese alternatives are making finally Adobe RGB 92 - 94% color space supported screens. I DO want monitors of that quality, pen-display or not, as a secondary monitor, as I'll keep my old PC functional. And planned pen´display use as a tablet : for only certain chunk of my sessions, Inutos Pro XL/L or XP-PEN Deco 03 for the most of the hours !

The witcher technique example: Perfectly right, but that's totally a comic approach, less of a digital paint style. Is fine if a very specific project request that aesthetic, but in concept and illustration, way more projects will require the painterly approach. You are absolutely free to use any. But learning new paths is good, you already know that other one... No? :)

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After twelve minutes in, he does tons of selections and uses the fill tool.

I think pure oils-like painting is much faster and expressive.... What I call it the painterly approach...

But to each his own.

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 I'm interested in all sorts of different types of workflows

That's the attitude :)  (I've illustrated the way the Witcher guy does, for years...btw. But in my time, there were no tutoriales for anything unless very expensive ones... taught all by my own... :s Slow , very slow way to learn, I don't recommend it. Only thing is it provides you with independence and flexibility, but that's it. Today not using learning resources for... ANYTHING would be stupid. Is cheap or free and easily accessible. (according to your voice, I'm way older...))

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I DO feel I'm in a better place to do that type of workflow, now that I have Sketchbook Pro and A. Photo.

Then go for it ! I'd still recommend trying the thumbnail, large brush, painterly approach (in low res, then upscaling canvas for details and small brushes) as: Is much, much, much faster, and the time you spend is more brainstorming, more creating, less technically fiddling with selections, your brain is not doing anything composition related, value related, etc, there, while the other way you're doing so cosntantly and giving you TONS more freddom to very fast CHANGE anything, you need to be lousy in most of the stages until all is very well decided and solid. THEN you switch to smaller brushes, and, till you get a decent  machine (no offense intended) go for resize up once is detailing-small brush stage. I don't know if you realize that a solid ink line art, contours based till last detail compromises your direction very much since the beginning, number one enemy in concept art with bosses, etc, but also for clients in any illustration project, freelance/indy or at companies. Again, that said, the witcher one is the right procedure for coloring comic pages. I'd say that ppl do even a ton more time saving tricks, but in that line of work. if my gigs were 80% coloring comic pages, I'd go that route, no doubt. For concept art and illustration...no way, unless I had already a group of clients totally loving that style... Would be a pity as then I'd get only in that procedure, never to evolve...

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 However, just by tinkering with this workflow, I don't find getting anatomy and poses its this techniques strong suite.

You can get as perfect and detailed in anatomy and poses with a painterly approach -if not more- than very much compromising all your piece to an initial detailed line art....

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For example, I absolutely hate the pose and anatomy the final image in this video (just look at the thumbnail. Yeah... this workflow's good for environments. But look that this dude's torso in this thumnail his ribcage is all messed up. He has no calf. Something's wrong with his butt. The front of his neck makes the neck WAY too thick. The woman in the distance looks nice, but then again, she takes up less than a 10th of the pixels:

Very good point, but you are not considering a pair of KEY facts.  The technique is NOT causing that. Many of the new concept artist, even ppl earning HUGE bucks in the form of a nice salary, are amazing in doing inspiring landscape artwork... And terrible figure drawing. Is often common to see great ppl at figure drawing and terrible with scenarios. The brain works different, is twodifferent ways of perceiving, and ppl focuses more in one or the other. An amazing illustrator is capable of both. IS NOT the technique the one disallowing him/her for getting a very detailed close shot figure. Is both a very wrong conception -so, is a bad habit from this folks, not that is a bad tech- that they can go away with that in a close element, while anything painting in photography tells you you need more detail there: Detailing the close, loosing the far away, with all sort of grades in the middle, also depending on pretended composition focus, and/or considering faking FOV exceptions, etc. Not the case, clearly. Just lazy first close element execution.  I, using SAME technique, just smaller brush, would have detailed properly, by increasing , pregressive detailing daubs that calf, body, neck, etc. Traditional painting technique (see Velazquez, Vermeer, etc) allows you to do this pretty well. That's painting. And the value of the general piece gets like many points higher than a well done comic detailed illustration, IMO. Yeah, this is a very personal take, tho, but i also consider what companies, folk, standards, all this perception counts, is the value given by society (often translated to specific bucks).Main point: Wouldn't hurt ANYONE knowing well BOTH techniques, and I mean, able to develop final high end pieces, with BOTH procedures. (and more!)

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Also Keinan Lafferty even states that it's not for building good poses and anatomy.

Noope...! is a first laying out technique... you only need to adapt to detailing, but you keep painting. believe me. Is not a tehory of mine. Besides I work so, seen many mates at work doing as well, high end top notch hyper realistic rendering that have no match using painterly approaches instead of solid contour comic-like compromises from start.

I rarely tell this to other artists, tho, now that i realize... is just sth I know is so....

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I'm not apposed to this workflow. In fact, I look forward to using it. But it seems like it DOES have weaknesses.

It does if one pretends to apply the initial large daubs, lousy BIG brush size for all stages. You go reducing brush size as you go detailing (moment to enlarge your canvas in your case. I'd do final size since the beginning, as also, I mostly use one or 3 layers, as much)

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Well yeah, I'm starting to peak my head out from under the comic book page approach for the very first time, because I'm starting to adopt a very digital workflow and I'm now trying to build up my youtube channel.

You know what? why push other style if ur so inspired .that's key...Keep doing that. Maybe try the other techniques, out of curiosity, as you never know. But trying hard in every style, always a good thing, no matter what.

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When I mentioned the hair I was more-so talking about refining the selection for the tiny strands of hair. Suppose you need to move the character and switch up the composition. Suppose your boss told you he wants it that way. In Krita, that would be impossible without some repainting.

In a painting approach, is all organic, changeable and fast. Redoing a large area : no big deal, as the procedure of freely painting with enough skill is light speed, anyway, compared to selections and very defined line contours. But not pushing it anymore... ;) just replying to disadvantages you seem to see, probably as have not used it to certain extent.

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But most selections should be done with a CTRL+Click on a layer

Yeah, when coloring comic pages I've done so... building first my flats with whatever fastes image editing trick, each flat color one later, ctrl click on the regular thumbnail layer, bang, you got ur selection. is in your pack of methods, as would be silly to color comic pages in other way...

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which took forever to mutilate for you btw, 

Man, serious machine issues, the... here you file flies, and this is a 2009 machine....and slow in some high end stuff, reason why am gonna soon upgrade...

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I'm not familiar with Sports references.

yeah, neither needed... but I hope you do practice more sport for those injuries... :)

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I'll look at some videos on Corel Painter then.

from the right pros, that would be really good thing to do. As mostly you can translate a lot to krita, AP or others.

You mention another vid steals perspective from a photo. I wanna be crystal clear: My main point is, for ppl yet not having the abaility to do perspective from scratch, no helpers, no photos, no nothing, and then their lost, bad thing to only learn to do that with help. As their lacking a important skill that will reveal even using photo. Same as with anatomy. For a pro that has a desadline, and is pretty able to paint on a canvas from scratch, hell now. let her/him use whatever to speed up the work. basing slightly on photo ref wont matter if enough art is put into it later, and deadlines are king. For personal work,my master pieces...NOPE, I wouldn't use any ""helper"(other than line stabilizers, as I have tested that tablet s don't give me the control I have in paper, hardware limitation! Even so, the hand/brain gets to learn to compensate the issue, I use estabilizers in less strength now.). Not even for freelance gigs if I have the time.

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But is guy also seems to do some line art at 56 minutes in:


 

that's compatible with painterly technique. Rembrandt would do so, and most of the classics. Those are ROUGHS, not profiled, compromised line art. Those are IDEAS level of roughs.

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Financially going from Maya, to Zbrush,

Only mentioned if interested in learning skills that besides allowing doing stuff, prepare you for a job :)

I wouldn't buy ANY of those now, I'd focus in the machine.

And learning Blender is a very good idea.

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The industry is way over bloated with one software for this, another for that, and another for this other thing.

It is what it is... either way, i don't love the industry a single bit, know too many ugly corners of it, after having worked at it. IE, I'm now refining my web coding skills, aiming for a  new web developer job or graphic design job as I've done for many years too, leaving full time freelancing, but not freelancing in the side. My "train on ZB, MAX, SUBSTANCE" advice is only for very convinced, very hardcore, able to live in a nomad style (travelling between cities AND countries) all their lives (unless thhey're lucky to live in Silicon Valley (software heaven, somewhat, tho with strong issues, too, ie, cost of living), some other areas of US and Canada, and some UK , France, if you get the idea.) For some one a bit trying everything and with an open mind....NOPE, not a single bit. My best advice is get a stable good job, non exhausting one, do your art in free time...

I'll cut it here, this is WAAY too long for any forums standard.

Only to reply to some question about how is Blender for freelancing . It is good. But requires from you a very long learning, just like with any high end 3D solution. IE, not longer than you'd do with Max or maya. Only thing is with those other two you get a hjob easierly. But paying 150 bucks PER MONTH, subscription based, puts for you Max and maya out of the map for a very long time. Blender fits there pretty well tho. 

I do handle well Blender for any freelancing need, and yep, once you know it deeply, is very good for freelancing. I'd recommend tho a better machine, specially for rendering times. And for high count polygon modeling. It can be a nightmare with an old i3 of the U series, at 2.1 Ghz and with only 6gb ram, and no dedicated card for Eve (the new real time rendering viewport in Blender that will make it VERY high end as a solution for 3D. Still, I see my self rendering with cycles and CPU, not so much GPU for rendering. But cool for having that in the viewport, much more productive.

 

Sorry the typos...too long to fix. I know you'll guess the meaning when an eaten word seem to mean the opposite of the intended sense...

And I hope it helps you a bit the infos... or if not, nice talk, hope it helped somehow.  ;). 

 

AD, AP and APub. V1.10.6 and V2.4 Windows 10 and Windows 11. 
Ryzen 9 3900X, 32 GB RAM,  RTX 3060 12GB, Wacom Intuos XL, Wacom L. Eizo ColorEdge CS 2420 monitor. Windows 10 Pro.
(Laptop) HP Omen 16-b1010ns 12700H, 32GB DDR5, nVidia RTX 3060 6GB + Huion Kamvas 22 pen display, Windows 11 Pro.

 

 

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About the bits pending, not sure if those two first videos you posted them as good or bad tuts examples.

The first one is speaking about building with light/shadows, values, actual volumes, kind of sculpting with  the brush, and he is teaching caricature drawing.

Not specially interesting for this matter, but it is in the fact that well, one can do it better or worse, but thinking in "3D" while drawing, and doing it in greyscale is a very old traditional technique.

 

Oh they're all good tutorials in their own way. All of these guys are currently working in the field. Some of them are better than others. The Characture drawing video, doesn't really matter if he's drawing a face or a landscape, basically that technique is what you described. Big brush, gradually make a small brush

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Is like any other approach, has its pros and cons. For concept art, specially landscape, and structures, it has solid advantages, but a color-from-the-start approach will have other pros.

Yeah, I'm  sure it would. That's a workflow I'll be trying out.

About the portfolio. the goal isn't to have a huge portfolio that I'd send to all potential employers. It's more like I'd have multiple portfolios and I'd send the applicable one to the job.

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My main point was more in the painting technique: biig blocks first. true that you are limited by your  machine, BUT.... if that's the case, one dirty trick you can very well use is painting  that in very low resolution, like in a 1200px wide image, desktop size, as this is only a mere composition initial planting of masses.


 

 

Doesn't that add noise to the image? Because with the content of my channel, I also have to think "this image will be a print down the road."

 

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The second video is very good for the case, IMO. They are actually doing this of drawing in small. I probably wouldn't carry it too far, although I can see how this way they can "brainstorm" visually very fast. They don't get married to a first idea, and they are all time comparing visually several different compositions. Working in scale, they are actually working with HUGE brushes, because each scene is tiny, but they are defining an entire mountain with a single brush splat. Of course, its easier to do so with mountains than with a high tech futuristic building, but you could very well have built that wall you made by painting by large flat brush splats, building that sensation of a wall... One thing I left out: Too much detail in the background sometimes is not convenient.

Well yeah, atmospheric perspective and all.

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Is still good what you did, but lousy, large paint daubs like  they make, even if detailing quite, help that sense of distance and lower detail, of atmosphere. My main point is I think is a general better approach than very refinined and cleaned line art, unless you are actually making a comic.

 

Right.

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And you use a lot of time in the selections with krita, with PS would be long, too.

Thinking back in hind sight, yeah. But I still think a faster and even GOOD result would be the thick inverse selection lines I mentioned earlier.

Maybe I'll make a video about that. I don't know if you're getting my meaning.

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While you could have done the thumbnail tech (maybe you are suggestiing you were thinking od doing so, to, when showing me that video) as then the brush size is not a prob, and once you scale up, you have that full structure planted, only need to refine some spots, not all, those that make the brain feel as enough to "feel" detailed. You do not need to detail every single thing in a same level. Just enough for the brain to understand (this would be easier explained by painting than with words...)

Well watch a 6:00 I was thinking of doing a similar workflow:

It just didn't work out.

Specifically I was trying out this guy's three layers per thumbnail approach for background, midground, and foreground

The three layer technique didn't work for me.

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The  thumbnailing technique, they explain it as the most convenient to use well your time, plant fast a set of brainstortmed visual possibiities, for you to see several possibilities, and for your boss and rest of the team to have the options. It helps you tons as it is deciding stuff than if not done first, doing those decisions later when the drawing is advanced, is complicated and a waste of time. In your case, is almost the only way to go in this style of large blocks which is so fast and so convenient, as your machine, surely for the small cpu cache, and other matters, in Krita can't do larger brushes. But as I say, by doing a main compsition in small,then scaling up, the machine should have zero probs.

 

As long as it doesn't make a bunch of noise on a print.

I'm in a bind. My body's falling apart. I just injured myself. And I'm doing construction. So if I don't get picked up in the industry, then I better keep building my audience and plan on making money on prints, tshirt sales, brush packs, tools like the one I linked for the actions pallet.

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That 2nd tut is really good, and done by pros. But my proposal, and you make what ever you'll desire of it, is, doing a single thumbnail, meaning, even larger, kind of almost all screen, but not as for press, not 300 dpi, not a 5000x5000 pixels. Whatever works well in that machine. Can be even a single small image at 1.000 pixels wide, also you can zoom-in a bit for easier work, at this point if you see a bit the pixel, no biggie (never hurts me, I'm a pixel art artist in games, I don't mind seen big pixels from time to time). The "large brushes", as the image is so small, will be in absolute terms pretty small, yet covering a large part of the image. Remember: you can, maybe should, worked in zoomed in, so that you see the entire desktop filled with your scenario. if hate seeing the pixels, work in thumbnail mode like them, is even good to forget about detailing in this stage, as is a bit your enemy in first stage.

Well with concept art you have strong deadlines. So big pixels and such, that's kinda expected. And people still love "The Art Of Books" but, for a youtube artist, who's going to sell prints... dunno... right now the youtube quality is the priority for me (I'm not rejecting everything you're saying though). To me, I live in a small town, never ran into anyone with an artistic job. The idea of me being picked up seems unlikely.

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Well, eventually, I supposed I'll get my hands on Clip Studio Paint.

Its main advantage is a superb ink and pencil feel, stabilization of the line is not from  this world, too. The oil brush is very good, even if does not try to mimic the "3d texture" of a very dense oil daub, but I don't like that much when Painter or Art Rage do that, as.... is a fake, anyway, the printer wont show the 3D blobs, and is constraining to a light source direction ofr those blobs, etc. Also is extremely good the customization of each tool. And the performance is very good. But you can do very well with almost any painting software out there, including A. Photo (which is not a painting software). I'd save my bucks for now to go adding for a bit more powerful machine.

 

Well, It doesn't cost as much as photoshop and you can do animation with it so I'd say it's likely I'll pick it up some time.

 

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wow. No need that much, u can add some parts later...Dunno in your area, but in my country, which has very similar prices than the US, indeed, a bit more expensive, you can just get :

Well I need a computer that will last me. Kinda working with a Channel I need to keep up with. Specifically, this is what I'm thinking of.

And I have a laptop, no monitor.

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-No monitor, as you have already one, and we're only talking about the performance issue, a Ryzen 7 (8 cores, 16 threads! ) 2700 (I'd go for the 2700x, but is constantly out of stock, everybody wants it, is fine to make a rough estimation, and the 2700 is very good, too, though 500mhz of difference in stock speed) . Enoughcpu cache. 8 mb ram 2400 mhz (you can add more later easily, I'd recommend 16). Just a HD seagate barracuda 7200 rpm, mother board B350, not going too low, to a A320, as that can be limitng later on. Box, well, with a 600W power supply, passive, should be enough. (so, still around 15 euros more than a basic one with a 500w). Card... g. cards are a case of extorsion now due to the bitcoin mining. bad time to buy a high end of those. So, a 1030 from nvidia has quite some of the needed shaders (Blender would benefit from a better card, specially Eve, but...not a show stopper, IMO). This card even can be used for playing e-sports games (but one's better not playing too much... ;) ). It has 2GB, enough for a while... if the mining stuff changes, will be a time to buy sth better. You don't need anything else (speakers, mouse, keyboard, will just use your current ones)

That all is about 668 euros, if you go to the right shop.

 

Know anywhere that already has that ready-made? I'm kind of a software guy, not much into hardware. And an Nvidia Graphics card is ideal.

 

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And an additional $300 on Cacani

I don't fully get this... There are a bunch of free or cheaper animation tools...


 

 

Maybe a month to month License for a stint.

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Have seen the oficial videos, nothing that much justifying the price compared to other options... I'd seriously test the one I mentioned, Animation paper.(and synfig does a bunch of the things cacani seem to do).

The problem with Synfig is you can't actually draw with it. It's all done with a mouse. I'll check out animation paper.

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Those are free, but even if willing to spend 300$ bucks for whatever the reason, I'd go spine... is not frame by frame (for that Animation Paper is great, IMO)  but is a job bringer.

 

Isn't spine only for game development though?

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A lot of companies are requesting knowledge in Spine, even if is focused on games, skeletal animation and animation per sprite parts, for game optimization, but is highly requested. Is a job profile. For my own indy stuff, I don't see the point. You go better with Animation Paper + Synfig, and if anything, getting to master Blender, to a point you can even do character animation gives u a ton of possibilities.

If 2.0 was here, especially with the grease pencil, then sure. Currently you need to screen capture your greace pencil animation when you're done because you can't save your progress.
 

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This is a extremely long path: I can now do that, but you need first to learn ALL modeling, uv mapping, texturing, animation, toon rendering, and of course, general Blender usage. But for Indy stuff I see it great. I'd be to think 3D animation is more future proof, but in the moment, animating in 2D in pieces/bones has its place in Unity game engine companies (small/mid size, there are many out there). I've recommended you better focusing in a single field, wont do it again... ;)

 

Animation is the main focus. But right now I'm building an audience and trying to make money on youtube. If I get freelance work along the way, cool. But even if I planned on going 100% freelance, sounds pigeon holing yourself into less work in just focusing on one thing.

I've been illustrating my whole life. So I show it off on my channel. But I'm focused on 2D animation for film and TV. When learning Blender, there's not much of a reason to learn every one of those things immediately, because blending 2D and 3D won't always need all that. 

I'm capable of learning the techniques of concept art. But chances are, that'll be for me and my channel. Where am I going to run into someone that'll hire me? So my focus is on my channel. Been working 80 hours a week on it. 8 for my day job. 8 for my channel.

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Yup. If anything, I'd add A. Designer (not because we're in this forum! I don't get a coin for recommending it, but I have it) if want for example a vector based solution to export to vector based (Adobe Animate (aka ""Flash", Synfyg, etc) animation packages, or for graphic design gigs requiring vectors. A lot of ppl used to go Illustrator first, and export for animation in Flash. But later Flash got so good that some eliminated the Illustrator step.


 

 

Oh yeah, I have Designer.

 

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The witcher technique example: Perfectly right, but that's totally a comic approach, less of a digital paint style. Is fine if a very specific project request that aesthetic, but in concept and illustration, way more projects will require the painterly approach. You are absolutely free to use any. But learning new paths is good, you already know that other one... No? :)

Yup

 
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After twelve minutes in, he does tons of selections and uses the fill tool.

I think pure oils-like painting is much faster and expressive.... What I call it the painterly approach...

But to each his own.

 


 

 

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 I'm interested in all sorts of different types of workflows

I like both styles. But your painterly style sounds like it's faster. I dunno if I could paint everything on one layer, but I could reduce my selections. 

 

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You know what? why push other style if ur so inspired .that's key...Keep doing that. Maybe try the other techniques, out of curiosity, as you never know. But trying hard in every style, always a good thing, no matter what.

Yeah, it's curiosity. And I'm also searching for a favorite workflow.

 

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Very fast, telegraphic style as am in a bit of a rush, but at least address important stuff....

2 hours ago, orphanlast said:

Well with concept art you have strong deadlines. So big pixels and such, that's kinda expected. And people still love "The Art Of Books" but, for a youtube artist, who's going to sell prints... dunno... right now the youtube quality is the priority for me (I'm not rejecting everything you're saying though). To me, I live in a small town, never ran into anyone with an artistic job. The idea of me being picked up seems unlikely.

The idea I proposed, in the meantime you are forced to use an under powered laptop, is to work at small, 1280x1024 or the like.Whatever is max res that allows you to use big brushes. This is only a start to mount your main composition, values, main light/contrast, the scene. You can then increse the image a bit once you are going to add more detail, and also, using a middle brush. Then, you can enlarge the whole canvas to final size. And now you have at this point ALL planted, before enlarging. All is there. Those mountains. That house, those trees, the road, the wondertastic cloudy sky, blades of light in the ground, etc.  Now u start detailing with paint daubs.painting, painting. All time painting. Now with a smaller, but not tiny brush. ANY blurring for up scale will be covered by your over painting. And even more, in some areas the blur will help you! Don't worry.  :) Also, you don't detail EVERYWHERE, a good painter does not do that. You only define what the brain and perception needs. The brain imagine the remaining. So, if you see sth a bit blurry, you will naturally will add "some" definition there. This is a huge key in concept art, and even painting, in general. Don't be afraid of that, the prints will end up great.

 

2 hours ago, orphanlast said:

Well, It doesn't cost as much as photoshop and you can do animation with it so I'd say it's likely I'll pick it up some time.

beware, only the EX version is ok for serious animation. I have the pro, but I bought it for inking mostly. The PRO only allows some seconds of anim ! Also, EX comes with many improvements to work with full comic pages and comic making specific stuff. Very important : WAIT. Once a year, I think it was in March, they sell the products, even EX at 40% of the price, I believe. Also, the upgrade cost from PRO is just ok. IMO; you're all setup with Affinity, Krita and the animation freebies, would save bucks for the machine.

 

2 hours ago, orphanlast said:

The three layer technique didn't work for me.

It will, at some point. One needs to revisit stuff from time to time, no need to force things... the more you handle -techniques- the merrier...

 

2 hours ago, orphanlast said:

Know anywhere that already has that ready-made? I'm kind of a software guy, not much into hardware. And an Nvidia Graphics card is ideal.

OH! A huge bunch, surely there are. But nope, am not  in the US...never travelled there either. In my country, I have like 3 or 4 local places where I get already mounted. But in those, I choose the pieces, and brands of the pieces. This is very important to me.This machine is better than a regula i7 860, maybe due to that an a lot of optimization I make to the OS, and a bit to parts. Feel free to PM me about parts questions at purchase time. Not a crazy expert,but enough to give a good advice.

2 hours ago, orphanlast said:

Isn't spine only for game development though?

Well, focused on that, but as far as I understood, it works for anything... The thing here is: Whenever you can, use the standard tool. Even fore remote, distance work, freelancing, you need to make work for an existing pipeline. Often , very often is Spine, for games. Don't close doors. Animating for games is a huge chunk of your possible freelancing. Yet tho, PURE animation is the first to learn. If you learn to animate in 2D, that's HUGE. That is a very good profile to have, and very much wanted: games, flash games, motion for publicity agencies, local TV, video editor studios, indy games, bedroom coder Android/iOS devs (they pay, too). You can get a ton of REMOTE work as an animator, if you learn to animate well. Even with a bit above average level you'd get nice gigs. Good line. So, the focus in anim, is clever. One huge advantage : Requires less profiles. Meaning, I , as web coder, i need to be a total jack of all trades. As a game modeler, the same (textures, uv map, PBR materials, rigging, concept, low and high pol count modeling , so ZB, re-topology, etc, etc) too many jackets and a ton of work to keep up in every profile, still, that's considered a single job profile. As an animator...you mostly...animate. :)  It'd be extremely good if  you also , AFTER mastering 2D, you'd leanr 3D anim. But I don't mean Blender's grease pencil. I mean FULLY animating, even if you don't learn 3D modeling, as the model would be provided to you!! Some ·D editing will proof handy, though, bbut not needed. As also, you can later on toon render in any package, even blender, and that's nice to do 2D animation with 3D advanatges, done that for web games. BUT IMO, if you start some 3D anim learning, the first focus is iron it in 2D anim, as also, ALL what you learn in traditional 2D anim will help u tons in 3D anim. Same as in traditional painting/drawing and digital painting that we were talking about. Know your core...

2 hours ago, orphanlast said:

If 2.0 was here, especially with the grease pencil, then sure. Currently you need to screen capture your greace pencil animation when you're done because you can't save your progress.

I meant full 3D animation, not Grease Pencil. that's super cool, but 3D anim opens you a HUGE professional field, both freelancing and in-house.

2 hours ago, orphanlast said:

Animation is the main focus. But right now I'm building an audience and trying to make money on youtube.

Hard, very hard way. Youtube is harder now than ever to make money. You are better of -you and most people- in having some other income source, and indeed, several, not all eggs in hwat basket, and if there's one, shouldn't be youtube. Youtube is best as a promotion for your real business. Still, nothing is impossible. But what gets the huge numbers are rarely things as niche as these...

Think better in selling tutorials at Gumroad , tshirts and stuff in the ton of online tshirt companies -is all free-, mugs, etc. (redbubble, society6, spreadshirt, cafepress, etc, etc, etc). Those needs tons of content to make any income, AND also, be VERY HIGH quality content. Even with those , numbers and quality, is still freaking hard to make any income. Well, even so, it is STILL more possible than to make some significant beer money in Youtube. Beware that because is very easy to get frustrated, seen it happen tons of times.

Also, a bit of an advice. Don't complain so much in the videos, or be a bit negative abotu how it's going. that's bad when promoting stuff. people will disconnect, people looks for evasion, good things, fun, positive. If sth does not work, don't blame on the audience, or warn that you wont make more videos. You damage your options doing so. if see sth not working, keep it to your self, study the case see what can work, see what succesful channel owners are making, copy a bit. ;) Never ever transmit a bit of negativity. the problem of injuries, or other real life matters, no prob, as it produces empathy in your viewers, though.  And ppl at youtube is tired of articial people, natural is what wins now.(ur fine there)

2 hours ago, orphanlast said:

Know anywhere that already has that ready-made? I'm kind of a software guy, not much into hardware. And an Nvidia Graphics card is ideal.

I might have pasted this twice, but must be there a ton of places to purchase it mounted, just you select which parts.

2 hours ago, orphanlast said:

nimation is the main focus. But right now I'm building an audience and trying to make money on youtube. If I get freelance work along the way, cool. But even if I planned on going 100% freelance, sounds pigeon holing yourself into less work in just focusing on one thing.

I've been illustrating my whole life. So I show it off on my channel. But I'm focused on 2D animation for film and TV. When learning Blender, there's not much of a reason to learn every one of those things immediately, because blending 2D and 3D won't always need all that. 

I'm capable of learning the techniques of concept art. But chances are, that'll be for me and my channel. Where am I going to run into someone that'll hire me? So my focus is on my channel. Been working 80 hours a week on it. 8 for my day job. 8 for my channel.

As a freelancer, the more you diversify, the better.One field dries, you camp on another, and so on. offer and opportunities vary a lot.

 

2 hours ago, orphanlast said:

I like both styles. But your painterly style sounds like it's faster. I dunno if I could paint everything on one layer, but I could reduce my selections. 

is faster, gives more freedom, the result is more artistic, and tested, more sell-able. Specially in prints...
painting on one layer: good habit, you focus more in traditional painting so...and less in montage/editing. With enough comfort and training with it, you become faster in production, so, worth a bunch of tries till you get your comfort zone...

2 hours ago, orphanlast said:

Yeah, it's curiosity. And I'm also searching for a favorite workflow.

We all do, even still after a lot more years....

You might want to realize that there's a thing, remote work. Some years ago it was taken not seriously . Is becoming more and more of a reality. A someone with a permanent injury (or of long term cure) or tied to a local area with low development on technology, might find interesting a bunch of options to find/get remote work (can give some small advice, PM if curious, tho I wont point u any magical solution...). And am not speaking about those gig bidding sites (upwork, guru, fiverr, etc)... Is extremely difficult to get projects there. There are tons of other more reliable ways. Still, not easy, not gonna fool u. Also, getting in contact with some companies, making some particular work for them, might get you there much more easily and solidly, give u pro level portfolio, which is essential, and maybe establish a permanent connection with one of the companies, and then you suddenly become their remote worker. Bang, prob solved. After that, all comes more easy (new relations, new gigs, your own contacts network, etc) We're not just local islands anymore...

So, IMO, good heading, 2D animation, seeing many gigs and full jobs about that. + Planned slow but firm introduction to 3D anim in blender, diversify several income sources. Youtube is a promotion medium, mostly, it almost wont bring any cash, unless extremely lucky. Concept art... as you see fit, tho if anim is the main line, focus on  that.... And exercise in a regular basis, to get better of your injuries. Concept art is fine but even full illustration, in your career path, better, as for 2D anim studios, a guy that also can do backgrounds and /or matte painting, very valuable. Still, I'd focus in sth first, doing it freakingly well, watch many courses, apply what you learn, train a lot, in 2D anim. You have a large scope of work to come to your online door, if master just that.

Edit: About Synfyg...Not sure if you can only paint "with a  mouse", long since last i tested it, but you can definitely, as someone pointed out in these forums, import full drawings from Inskcape, in vector formats. And probably from your A. Designer.

Anyway, for your heading, which I know better now, really that Animation paper thing might be very interesrting. Spine too, but as sth to know, not the best for traditional 2D animation, just to get freelance work. You might find interesting (they have a very reduced free version) Moho Pro. https://my.smithmicro.com/anime-studio-pro.html

Also, one tool widely used is Toonboom. And if ready to get into pixel art based jobs, Cosmigo's Pro Motion NG is a must like Spine is for higher resolution. Both are standards in each of their fields: Spine for high resolution 2D games for Unity and similar, and also so for a ton of web games, Pro Motion for pixel art based games (mobiles and the indy , very personal style scene, very niche, but steadily growing, I'ma pixel artist, worked as one at companies, btw ;) ). And of course... another huge job bringer, Adobe CC Animate. But we know the issue. I just have to mention it...

Also, as is very related, and you said you want to diversify at least a bit, wont hurt at some point to learn Adobe After Effects at least to have that for your CV. What it does is similar to what you'd do with Fusion, which surely easier to get for you as a freelancer, as they provide a free version:  https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/fusion/

In your path a bit of FX and video editing (hitfilm express is nice for not too complex stuff, and free) is always gonna be good to add as an additional skill in your portfolio. But nothing is as important as getting ninja level in 2D animation, second priority, 3D anim, then FX, editing, etc.Or this is my opinion... In freelancing. In-house, you'd specialize a lot more, doing only one thing, surely. Except in very small studios where you freaking do everything (i'm familiar to that)

 

AD, AP and APub. V1.10.6 and V2.4 Windows 10 and Windows 11. 
Ryzen 9 3900X, 32 GB RAM,  RTX 3060 12GB, Wacom Intuos XL, Wacom L. Eizo ColorEdge CS 2420 monitor. Windows 10 Pro.
(Laptop) HP Omen 16-b1010ns 12700H, 32GB DDR5, nVidia RTX 3060 6GB + Huion Kamvas 22 pen display, Windows 11 Pro.

 

 

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Perfectly!  :)  (feel free to PM me  ;)  )

AD, AP and APub. V1.10.6 and V2.4 Windows 10 and Windows 11. 
Ryzen 9 3900X, 32 GB RAM,  RTX 3060 12GB, Wacom Intuos XL, Wacom L. Eizo ColorEdge CS 2420 monitor. Windows 10 Pro.
(Laptop) HP Omen 16-b1010ns 12700H, 32GB DDR5, nVidia RTX 3060 6GB + Huion Kamvas 22 pen display, Windows 11 Pro.

 

 

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