Re: Sean Mirrsen's generic pony art thread.

**Slag** on Sun Dec 04, 2011 1:48 am

You sound like me, only since I draw with pencil and paper I end up ruining the picture by erasing too much. I usually end up ditching it at that point.

**Sean Mirrsen** on Sun Dec 04, 2011 2:02 am

I used to do that when drawing P&P too.

At least I got to redo some of those once I got a tablet.

**Sean Mirrsen** on Tue Dec 06, 2011 1:57 am

Speaking of P&P. Warning, sort-of-spoiler for last episode.

Spoiler:

I was REALLY bored today, and had no laptop with me again.

**Slag** on Tue Dec 06, 2011 2:02 am

Puntgun? More like heavy artillery.

And leave it to Pinkie to have a propeller helmet.

**Sean Mirrsen** on Tue Dec 13, 2011 2:57 am

Been a while since I posted anything, wasn't it? I'm beginning to become worried for my drawing aptitude a little myself.

To shake things up a bit, I found an excuse to start drawing something again - namely, I "upgraded" the Corel Painter 11 I've had to Corel Painter 12, to see if it's improved in any meaningful way. The guinea pig for the experiment was Twilight.

Unfortunately, not much to look at, and I didn't color her. Painter is very stiff in the interface department, Photoshop is much better in that regard, and I could easily switch back and forth between the pony color palette and the image there - not so in Painter. Also, it's hard to find good coloring tools in Painter - unless you really want to "paint" rather than digitally draw, it's not very useful. In other words, this experiment is over, I'm sticking with Photoshop, except if I really want to make a "pencilly" sketch.

**Slag** on Tue Dec 13, 2011 4:39 am

Well, the good news is you can still draw at least. And now you know what software works.

**Debesh** on Tue Dec 13, 2011 5:41 am

Hope you didn't have to shell out any money for your lesser program there :p
From what I understand, Photoshop is the god of all other 2D editing software.

**Sean Mirrsen** on Tue Dec 13, 2011 10:57 pm

Well, if there's anything I like Painter for, it's sketching. As long as you don't need to mess around with lots of different tools, layers, or colors, it's actually pretty decent. There's lots of little stuff that helps, like saner navigator placement, canvas rotation and zoom controls on said navigator, underlying paper texture, brushes that allow dynamics for EVERYTHING and with more precision, plus a whole slew of other things. But as soon as you want to try any conventional digital drawing methods, it turns into a cludge.

It's obviously geared towards more professional artists than I am. Maybe if I were to take up paints or something, it'd be a lot easier, but I haven't used paints since... fifth or sixth grade, IIRC.

Anyway, another sketch to keep myself rollin':

I no longer consider Rainbow Slash a spoiler. Besides, it's only a spoiler if you mention what it's a spoiler for - and unless that thing gets off the ground at all, it'll be moot anyway.

In the meantime, anyone got any pointers on conveying motion? I'm slowly moving from making believably structured static characters to believable dynamic poses. In this scene, even I'm not sure what's happening anymore - but it was originally intended as one character barely dodging the other's attack by falling to the ground. Even I can see it doesn't quite look like that. At most, it looks like RS pulled a "slash into hello" on a sleeping/resting pony, startling her. Advice?

**Dsarker** on Tue Dec 13, 2011 11:29 pm

Oh, it's clear what happened. She's interrogating Frieden, the poor dear.

**Sean Mirrsen** on Tue Dec 13, 2011 11:33 pm

I've been meaning to ask you and FD, btw - how the hell do you do randomized avatars? I know it has something to do with PHP scripts, but how, exactly? You need personal hosting space for it or something?

(also, it's causing the forum's built-in resizing script to bug out and display them full-sized - your Scratch avatar, and FD's original caped NMM avatar, specifically.)

**Dsarker** on Tue Dec 13, 2011 11:37 pm

www.signavatar.com, if I recall correctly.

**Sean Mirrsen** on Wed Dec 14, 2011 12:15 am

Quick retouch:

Spoilered for Painter default size being 1900 wide (edit: wait, I can resize that):

Best of all, I can sketch in Painter and export to PSD with little to no functionality loss.

Oh, and of course I spent no money on this thing. Who do you take me for, a non-Russian?

Armok on Wed Dec 14, 2011 12:57 am

These are great! Also, nice to see FiN is still alive.

**Sean Mirrsen** on Wed Dec 14, 2011 1:18 am

Technically, that's no longer FiN. That's "FiD", as I acronym it, although "FId" or "FI" would be more accurate.

More touch-ups and detail:

**Sean Mirrsen** on Wed Dec 14, 2011 2:29 am

The only coloring tool I can at least somewhat nicely use is a colored pencil. It feels like I'm back in kindergarten for some reason. I think there's still a jug full of colored pencils from those times sitting in a shelf somewhere.