What artists will not come up with, just to achieve progress in their work! In an age when Disney technologies in the style of “draw on a piece of paper and you will be happy” are a thing of the past, artists are increasingly responsible for creating quality content.
It takes a well-trained eye, a well-trained hand and, in some cases, ingenuity. In addition, the skilled artist has a duty to skillfully tame anatomy, perspective, and giants like Photoshop. But if you don’t want to mess around for a long time …
5 simple drawing and animation programs
If the skills are still lacking, but you want to draw, programs that are simple on the interface come to the rescue, which will make it easier to master the art of CG.
As stated on the developer’s site, SAI is “high quality, lightweight drawing software.” This program has gained popularity due to the anti-aliasing of the pen. It appeared a little earlier than in Adobe Photoshop, and was not resource-intensive. The small number of tools and the simplicity of the interface make it possible to use this program even on office and old computers. SAI is popular among Japanese artists as a manga drawing and storyboarding tool. 7 out of 10 interviewed artists chose this program as the main one in their activity.
According to Aleksey, the host of the CG Speak channel, Krita is similar in interface to Adobe Photoshop, but simpler, more convenient and not resource-intensive. According to the developers of Krita, this program was created “from artists to artists.” A special feature of Krita is the presence of brush engines that allow you to repeat almost any traditional material, textures and templates for English and Japanese stop-motion animation, as well as a timing panel.
Clip Studio Paint is developed by the Japanese company Celsys and is focused on the creation of comics, illustrations and animation. The artist and future programmer DividebyZilla, who used the program, claims that Clip Studio Paint combines the features of the previous two programs from the list, but creating animations in it is still more difficult than in Krita.
Open source free program for creating time-lapse animation. Has a similar interface to Paint Tool SAI. Popular with online artists such as Totes Fleisch, shplvrs, Notella17.
Canadian software for advanced artists, accessible and easy to use. This program has strong anti-theft protection and is used by such animation studios as Walt Disney, Pixar, Dream Works. YouTube has tutorial tutorials from AnimationSchool Streams on using Toon Boom Harmony.
Chips and cheats in CG
To draw well, you need to not only know, but also be able to cheat!
Tips worked out with experience significantly reduce the time to create one job. So, experienced artists use handy tools to create a sketch and only later finish drawing the details “from their heads.”
From black and white to color
With the help of a gradient superimposed in the Mask layer, you can turn a color image into monochrome, and without losing tonality and shades.
To get a color image, just create a layer on top of the black and white occlusion and paint.
Light or shadow
Chiaroscuro – the imposition of a certain gradation of tones and shades in the picture in accordance with the color and intensity of light.
According to the artist Geexy, you need to paint chiaroscuro from the light, not from the shadow, since the shadow, in fact, is the absence of light. This method will teach you to see the shades of shadows, their intensity and gradation, to draw volume without using sharp “metallic” transitions.
Artist Portfolio
In a portfolio, it is not worth collecting the best works, but works in different styles and different stages.
The most successful ones should be mixed with the less successful ones in order to give the customer an even impression of the level and experience. The works should convey the main idea of the artist, be at the same time simple and well executed, without unnecessary strokes.
Technical component
The colors are encoded with specific combinations of numbers and are named according to formulas from a combination of numbers, Latin letters and numbers.
Chiaroscuro is based on the laws of light reflection in physics. Perspective and anatomy embody the laws of nature and trigonometry. Thus, in order to be an artist, it is important not only to have a sense of style and a peculiar taste, but also to know the physical and mathematical basics.
