Sketch Blog

I had to take an unexpectedly long break from Modo. For two reasons, my Desktop was damaged during the storm years ago and my Laptop was getting old and slow. It just couldn't handle the wonderful power of Modo. I used Modo indie for a while but I quickly outgrew it. So now I have to basically pickup where I left off. This is not the first time I've had to relearn Modo after long periods of time without using it. But this time around it was much easier to use. With a lot of changes and updates and a new PC, Modo is even more pleasant than before. Below are two current works. Please don't be impressed by the human model. That was done with MakeHuman so I could have a face to paint and texture and checkout how UV's work in Modo. The cup however, I modelled. The texture isn't completely symmetrical yet but it will be. It's a simple and modest tea cup. Soon I will make a second version, turning it into a cappuccino cup. After playing around with the face,

My newest timelapse has been posted. I said all I had to say in the description. Hope you guys enjoy this one!

I've started to use Krita again in preference of photoshop. My only gripe is that for some reason my brushes won't export from my laptop properly and I only end up with about half of the brushes I put into the pack. It's very frustrating. Well anyway, there's really not much to say. This was an unplanned work I managed to record on livestream.

Ghosty Process Timelapse from Draconian Rain on Vimeo . It's no secret that I love everything bright and flashy in my art and I have a terrible habit of making my paintings and animations too busy. Which you will see happening in the timelapse video above. My goal was simple enough: Animate a simple ghost in no more than 15 frames at 12fps on loop. For whatever reason I couldn't get Ping Ping loop to work and a few times I tried copy, paste reversed and that was ok, but in the end I used motion path and made sure the movement was fluid enough to not need ping pong looping. I had planned out to keep everything super simple. A basic background or blank background, a simple cartoon ghost. But I couldn't help myself, I had to make the inner body look magical and like it had spiritual energy. Then I had an idea. A while ago now, I watched a TVPaint video where someone created animated brush strokes by holding CTRL while drawing on a series of empty instances. And no

The purpose of this animation was to use the gradient tool with a colour set to fading out into transparent. I chose to animate steam from a coffee cup on a still painting. It was very interesting, simple and fun.

Felt kinda down so I created this in tvpaint to cheer myself up. I just wish I had of thought of the type of brush I was using a little more thoroughly because it made painting quite difficult. Live and learn I suppose.

I've been experimenting in TVPaint for a while now and I only just figured out how to get the gradient tool to work. I had a lot of fun making this. There have been countless times where I have wanted to animate my artworks to express more emotion or atmosphere and with TVPaint I feel that I can. Wonderful to work with and fabulous to paint in.

After years of trying and saving and failing to save enough for TVPaint, I finally was able to buy a copy with some help. Which I plan to pay back in the near future. After spending years using Toon Boom (A great program, don't get me wrong) I am finally comfortable animating. I realised very faster that I am about 95% raster based in everything I do, about 3% 3D, 1% traditional and 1% vector. In TVPaint, not only can I express myself better, but I have found the tools far more intuitive. I do wish there was a clipping layer, but after getting used to using masking and it's quirks, it has a lot of advantages with the way it's setup in TVPaint. One thing that has constantly annoyed and disappointed me in Toon Boom was the lack of ease for cel shading shadows and highlights. You either had to use a lot of nodes and the "Cutter Tool" and the frequently wouldn't overlay together or if you tried to animate it on a separate layer, you couldn't see the on

A year ago now in early April, I was playing one of my most favourite games and quite possibly one of the best Christmas gifts anyone has ever given me and I came across this. I have never seen it again, before or since it happened. I trimmed the video down to the woman placing a random ball of fire on the ground. Previously, there was a weird car accident where a bus bumped into a car and exploded. Since then there have been bug patches.   I love watching this over and over. I recorded this on my PS4 and I just can't get over how weird it is.

My process is simple in OpenToonz. I always do my draft animation in raster. Over time, vector lines build up and eventually cause lag among other issues. After spending years as a raster painter it's also a comfort thing. And as you can see, no I don't use the automatic inbetweening or morphing or whatever OT calls it. Each program has a different name. I only occasionally use rotate and translate/position. Also referred to as motion tweening. I personally prefer frame by frame animation so I don't use the mesh, cut-out or bone animation features. If I do then it's usually for the entire animation or one scene item amongst fbf animation but it's rare. I do however like to play with those tools for fun but not for any serious projects. I made this video because I was starting to get a lot of questions about how I animate and unfortunately this is all there is to it. I don't have any special tricks or shortcuts. I mostly just do it one drawing at a time.

I have been working on this for 4 months. I couldn't make up my mind. At first I wanted to fully commit to raster based animation, but there were certain features of vector that I wanted to use or couldn't resist. This is all frame by frame animation at 24fps about 60 frames in total, give or take a few frames. Originally I wanted to add a texture to the hair instead of colour but it just didn't look right. I was also hoping to try a water colour look but it just didn't suit the lineart. Hopefully when I learn a little more I can do some compositing and add a few effects such as lighting, shadow, and a background I like.

In Toon Boom Harmony, how do you edit gradients? The second icon on the tool bar if you click and hold, the last tool option is the edit gradient tool. To enable a gradient, you need to first create or edit a swatch and click Gradient to enable it and then choose if you want linear or elliptical. The above video, though fast, shows this. Please do use the option to slow down the video if it's too fast. The edit gradient tool is really great and works best on vector layers. It has resize, rotate and skew and is also very easy to move about. As far as I know, even the gradient can be animated but I have not tried to do so since I don't often use gradients in my animations other than for a colour overlay effect over the entire animation. I, like many others, looked for this tool with the painting options and became quite frustrated. It took some getting used to but once you know where this tool is, it makes editing your work a lot easier. The edit gradient tool also e

2nd experiment: Painting hair and darker skin tones. Usually I paint darker skin to orange. Not just because I have some issues seeing certain colours in a certain hue properly but also because I lack the skills to balance it out. The best thing about Krita is that the layer Blend modes function a lot like Photoshop (Which I can no longer afford to sub to) AND it has a HUGE amount of other options for adjusting colours or changing them as well as some useful masking options. I used a little bit of masking and at once stage you can see me get confused in this video. So far loving the changes. Usually I couldn't use texture brushes because of lag. Now, it's not an issue. Each update I am noticing the changes in performance and things added. Loving the direction Krita is heading towards!

I have been doing a lot of these but have been unable to record them. So for the first time in a long time I managed to record some art without any crashing from either Krita or Snagit. My main experiment was the brush sizes and lag while recording. I prefer to do my blending with a particular paint brush and some times a variety of blurring blender brushes. Usually though it's just a standard smudge brush with a thick paint load. One thing about Krita, I always seem to draw very dark and often use a lot of grey. It's funny how it works out like that but I like it. I find I can create saturated art a lot easier in Krita than any other art application which is important to me. I often like to do a lot of dark themed art but when I have the opportunity to use sparkly shiny things I tend to lose focus and create the exact opposite of what I was aiming for. My next few experiments in the near future is animating in a painterly style in Krita and creating some animations wit

I've been away recovering and while I was sitting outside I thought it might be nice to create a few 3D assets for clip. Things like flowers, trees, succulent plants. I thought Aloe Vera Barbadensis and Aloe Haworthia would be nice. They're just so interesting looking. But then I encountered a number of issues I forgot about and remembered why I used to use Blender to make these assets. Clip uses a really old and outdated FBX file so if you decide to make assets you really need to make sure it's FBX 6.0 and nothing else higher. If you're lucky you might be able to make OBJ's and get the textures to work but it's unlikely. If you do try to use OBJ, I am not fully sure but a while ago you used to be able to drop the zip folder on the canvas and have it work properly, so try that. Otherwise, keep trying. Though clip can use Collada, I don't recommend it. I don't think I know anyone that's ever been able to get it to successfully work and retain it&#

Click the image to be linked to the download Below is the 3D item in action! It's actually quite fun and equally frustrating to make assets like this for clip. Unfortunately the program I am using is exporting in weird ways and I end up having to go back to Blender, make adjustments then re-export. Doesn't matter though, as long as it works. Hopefully one day Clip might consider making their accompanying modelling app in English too and make things a little easier to make and import assets for clip.

My switch to Modo already looks far more attractive. I have ALL THE TOOLS I HAVE EVER WANTED IN  ONE  PROGRAM!!!!!!!!!!!! I’m subbing and for as long as I can. Sad part is trying to DL the content is incredibly difficult. It keeps throwing a network error and I have to restart the whole process. The transition has been quiet easy really. The only things I am finding hard is flipping normals and aligning them but I am slowly getting used to it and finding out where they are. UVing is SO easy that I found it hard because I over complicated it. And I find that funny. It used to be such a hassle before. All round I am loving it! I also can't get over the retopology tools. I like them more than 3D Coat's retopo tools! Modo is also so fast. Even rendering is quite fast. Especially when compared to others *cough*Blender*coughcough* I think the biggest thing I hated about Blender was the "Holier than thou" attitude for using freeware and then do nothing to help

Because I don't like to see people at a disadvantage and because I'm not only in love with Clip Studio Paint but almost totally biased with it, I have created as MANY tools as possible to not only make pixel art a little easier but more comfortable. PLEASE share my brushes. Even if you don't credit me or remember who I am, PLEASE send these to your friends that use clip and make pixel art! I only ask that people don't sell these brushes. Of course I can't stop anyone and I can't prove they are mine since anyone that knows the program could make these tools. My goal is to keep these brushes free and accessible to everyone so they might be able to enjoy making pixel art in their favourite program. I haven't made any pixel tools in other apps. I might be able to but it's not a priority since most people know where the default pixel brushes are. By default clip doesn't have a pixel brush simply because it has an antialiasing option that can be turn

This post will have a number of edits over time so comeback and check it out. For now here's a few tips. Also this is a bunch of tips and advice, NOT a tutorial! Modelling Make sure NOTHING is select! Then press T to make some quick edits. Use the hotkeys W E R for Translate, Rotate and Scale. Pressing Spacebar will cycle you between Vertex , Edge or Polygon mode. It can also finalise/apply things. Alt + Left Click to rotate. Alt + Right Click to rotate in an animated almost non stop motion (Don't know what it's called yet.) Extremely useful, especially when looking for errors. Always UVmap your model BEFORE you paint on it! This one should be obvious but I get asked a surprising amount of times so I am putting it here. Enable GoZ if you have Zbrush. You'll thank yourself later. Switching between apps is very easy and makes quick work of retopo. Be careful of SubD modelling and always use the preview mode before committing. In other words, work lowpoly a

I am happy to announce that I will be making a return to 3D modelling and what not. I have had to give it up for the past year due to system limitations and frequent crashing. The kind that does damage. Honestly I've been to frightened of killing my laptop so I gave it up for a little while. I am hoping to move all of my Blender knowledge to Modo. I used Modo Indie for a short while and I enjoyed it until the problems arose. But I have managed to get a lot of things fixed, added and removed so I am about to try again with either Blender or Modo. Now that Modo has allowed subscriptions on their full version of Modo I am more egar to try out new things. I have found in the past that to do certain things, Modo has an advantage and far less lag than Blender. And then there was the one year where after reopening Blender files, it would corrupt the file and this was before I got into the habbit of double saving. One save, and save a copy and only reopen the copy/backup. Now that was