Animation – A Knight in Peril?
Rainy and Ghostly Evening!
Hello everyone!
Tonight I experimented with some of Clip Studio Paint’s animation capability. With a little trial and error, I was able to make the haunted look of this design even more frightening by adding some willow O’ wisps, rain effects and a soft fiery glow to the pumpkin’s eyes.
If I haven’t said it before, I’ll say it again. Fall is one of my favorite times of the year…and not just because of Halloween. I enjoy the color changes in the leaves and the smell of the air as neighbors burn them (only where it is legal of course).
Hope you enjoy this .GIF. Let me know your thoughts about this or anything else you see on my website. If you have questions, please ask. I love to help!
Goodnight all!
Deep Mountain Castle
Hey everyone!
I have a scary treat for you tonight. Deep Mountain Castle is a concept castle set on the edge of the forest along a body of water. Where does it go and what is inside? Those are great questions if you can survive the dangers that await within.
This piece was made using Clip Studio Paint and I used a number of color filters to make the shapes and the environment work the way that I wanted them too. There is few line strokes in this. Most of it is all paint and inking tools.
Hope you enjoy!
Spirit Falls
Good evening everyone!
Spirit Falls is my latest concept piece that I have developed tonight for your viewing enjoyment. What do you see moving through the waterfall? Ghosts? Spirits? Magical energy? These all are components for the theme that I followed so you are all correct.
This piece took me four hours to put together from start to finish. As usual, I started with a saved template that I use to build my digital artwork. It is a grey matted “paper” that I use for all of my images. I find that it is much easier on the eyes than when I start with all white. My screen tends to get a bit bright as well so the grey background helps a lot…also nice for helping me to measure my highlights and shadows. The template I use is 2894 × 2039 pixels.
I found a generic photo of a waterfall that I embedded into the piece and then blurred over a dark lavender fill. I blew it up to twice it’s size so that only the texture of the water shows through. I then removed just the fill that I needed so that the waterfall would show through. This manipulation of generic photos saved me some time.
I created a new layer and penciled in the warrior. I drew him much larger so that I could get the pose the way I wanted. As a side note, I don’t use any programs like poser or anything else that would generate a 3D model. This will probably change in the future as I do like to save time. I think the freehand pose gives it more freedom of movement.
I then used an ink wash to color the body and clothing. I can blend and build color very fast with the inking tool. I have always loved ink both digital and contemporary. Using my air brush tool, I placed shadows, highlights, and details in the skin where I thought it was necessary.
After all this was complete, I then shrunk the figure down and placed him in the foreground. With a little blending I was able to make him part of his surroundings…especially the ground.
Lastly I added one more layer for the ghostly movements you see starting up top and moving toward the bottom left…..or do they start bottom left and move up? Due to the lack of signs to tell them otherwise, I’m sure the spirits made up their own minds.
I hope you enjoy and happy blogging!
Ghostly Orb Forest
Ever walk into a forest and see ghostly orbs fly around you? This is what it might look like if you do. I imagine a lot of activity all at once as if an energy burst is suddenly being released until finally pulsating out of existence.
This piece was designed in black and white to create a spooky mood accentuating the darkness and shadow of the night. The orbs are a bright contrasting white so they are able to communicate their presence, movement, and let everyone know they are there.
This piece was designed using Clip Studio Paint and consists of four layers. The initial pencil layer was later converted to detail layer toward the end of completing the piece. The other layers are an ink layer, background layer, and shadows layer.
To create a more 3 dimensional appearance, elements of shadows and highlights were placed throughout all of the layers with a proper amount of blending where needed to fuse the elements together.
The trees were created with a thick inking brush with fine detailing afterward. A tree texture tool was used to give more of a bark look to the skin of the tree. This also allows for more interesting shadows as they were placed with an air brush tool.
The bushes in the foreground were created with an ink wash set to a grey tone much like taking a sponge to a piece of paper with ink. Just enough texture to provide the look of bushes without much more but it helps to frame the piece together.
In the background I placed a slow moving mist moving throughout the trees again to provide some more depth and make it seem as though the orbs were traveling through the woods.
The far background has a number of different tree and grass designs making it seem dark and very difficult to find your way through.
Hope you enjoy this piece…be sure not to get lost should you enter the woods alone and unafraid.
Wave Rider
This was inspired by the increased size of the waves as a storm approached. It was easy to visualize someone riding the top of the waves (not me) as they pushed to the shore with ever increasing momentum. The sky was dark and the air was hot and muggy as the storm grew closer.
This image was created with only three pens. One was a brush pen filled with India ink and the other two pens used were a medium and thin black prisma pens. The two smaller pens provided just enough detail for the piece while the thicker brush pen helped create the weight of the clouds and the water.
Contour lines were used again to create the sense of movement across the waves as they moved toward the beach. Where the waves were the fullest at the top, shadows were filled in to give the appropriate weight they needed.
Some speed lines were added at the end to give the surfer the appearance of speed as he moved through the waves.
Total time spent creating this piece was about an hour and half. I used very quick broad arm strokes as I drew not worrying about each individual line. Both the water and the sky was developed at the same time so that the piece was equally balanced on top and bottom with dark shapes.
The sky was developed also using horizontal lines to give varying degrees of mass to the clouds. Some clouds were more transparent than others so by spreading my lines apart, I was able to give more of a translucence to the clouds. The closer lines help provide the shadow.
Daddy Daughter Picture
This was a picture that my daughter Rylie and I drew together while sitting outside at the beach one day. She started with a very loose pencil sketch of her idea and spent about 10 minutes on the subject and composition. I then went back over her pencils with a fine inking pen to solidify the piece and used the same amount of time.
At the end this completed drawing turned out as a nice exercise for both of us. A total of 20 minutes spent on a rather quick drawing of what could be a very nice day out on the ocean.
Magic Forest
Bunker Response Team
This is an image design I put together recently which can be easily applied for T-Shirts and or other options. This was created using Clip Studio Paint with a multilayer process. I find that Clip Studio Paint is my choice for drawing almost anything digitally. I like the flexibility that it offers.
I began the design by building the frame of the shield first using a curve tool and polyline tool in tandem. Once I got the lines where they needed to be, I then locked the layer so I didn’t accidently select and change it.
The next layer I made was the text layer which was created first in Microsoft PowerPoint and then exported into Clip Studio Paint as a .jpg file. I was then very easily able to manipulate the text where it needed to be within the shield. While I think Clip Studio Paint has a lot of capability for script text in comics, I have a hard time using the text tool for anything else.
After my text was layed in, the next layer was the skull itself. I drew it using a pen tool and specifically, the for effect line tool. This gave the skull a nice thick to thin line and added nicely to the character of the piece.
Now for the colors. The last part of the project was the colors. I did these as separate layers as well. I should have created layer folders for each but I instead gave each layer it’s own layer in one large folder.
The first color I applied were the flats of the shield. These were then saved and locked. I then selected the flats after creating a new layer to do the fine lines, detailing, and shadows. The selection tool allowed me to detail these areas without having to “go outside the lines”.
Finally, I did the same process for the Skull and added a generic flag. the glow on the Skulls eye was creating using the urchin tool. Prior to having the client approve the piece, I added a 35% fade. This is a cool effect which allows the shirt design to better blend into the color of the T-Shirt. It helps to know what color shirt you will place this on prior to colorization though. A quick background layer also provides the blending necessary so you don’t end up with a box around the design on the shirt. I save my files as high resolution 6000 x 6000 350 dpi .png files.
If you have any questions, please let me know.
Tutorials
