Sketch Blog

OpenToonz Animation Timelapse from Draconian Rain on Vimeo . I made this in hopes of showing others that you don't need to be in a studio or use fancy software to make animation with cool looking effects. It's a shame that so many people strongly believe that you need After Effects to create anything halfway decent. It's simply not true. All you need is passion, determination, motivation and a willingness to not only learn but be prepared to do problem solving. After you learn OpenToonz, your only real roadblock is yourself. Keep trying guys. Just keep at it and please always use freeware to learn animation first because so many people after they realise there is not "do it for me" option and find out that you have to do everything yourself, these people give up while others come to find that despite the results they absolutely hate the process and also give up. Don't waste your precious money on paid software until you are certain that animation i...

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...

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.

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...

Tiara For Himi by DraconianRain on deviantART This mode was created in Blender, Zbrush, Topogun and the texture painted in Clip Studio Paint.

So I had quite a hectic time with this. I had a 1yr subscription that I imported for retas studio. I tried making this animation in it since I learned it and I found that no matter the program or pencil and paper I still had the one issue that keeps coming up. Export, loss of quality and video editing. After spending days to make just this which I changed over to toonboom studio to complete, I realised that I am going to have to learn to use adobe after effects. And it's been so hard. It's been very overwhelming. Unfortunately I don't have the PC power to use it effectively which means both my PC and Laptop will need an upgrade =___=  Still I am pretty determined to get 2D animation to work for me. I just WISH I had the money to buy toon boom animate or animate pro. But I don't so I'll just have to stick to using multiple programs. At the moment I am using Clip Studio Paint, Adobe After Effects, Toon Boom Studio and Flash. Just makes me glad that I can afford ad...

So the characters in this work are Salem (The male) and Faith. Yesterday I spent hours, unexpectedly a lot more time than I planned on digitally painting this work in opencanvas. It's not finished yet, I have to experiment more with the bottom left corner. So far so good. I tried out sharpen filter on my painting this time. It definitely gave some unique paint like looks and feeling to it. And it certainly added some much needed depth. My only issue now is to try not to over abuse it and ruing the work but like my first time with overlay, it's going to take time, practise and time to settle down from the excitment over it. Tools Used: Wacom Intuos 5 OpenCanvas 5.5 Regular wacom pen nib, black.

Well I decided to hide away on April Fools day. Almost every site seems to be participating. I have a new webcomic posted on smackjeeves now. Starts out with some action. Visit the webcomic here:  Lost Words The Webcomic Right now I am working on a digital painting that is mostly just for fun and is a bit of a spoiler for early readers. Please do not steal or use without my permission or remove my watermark. I spent hours and hours on the cover art only to screw up the text. But it will do for now. I'll be updating the comic either monthly or several times a month. I mostly want a reasonable update schedule. The first image was drawn and painted in OpenCanvas 5.5 and the bottom image was drawing in Photoshop CS6

This drawing was a colouring and painting experiment in Photoshop CS6. Please repsect my work, these images on this blog belong to me. I used Gradient Map for the first time on the hair and I adore the effects of it. I think I will be using it more often. Pinky by ~ DraconianRain on deviantART

Here are some of my MangaStudio tutorials that I have posted, most on DeviantArt. http://draconianrain.deviantart.com/journal/Manga-Studio-EX-4-Walk-Through-Part-1-305058988 http://draconianrain.deviantart.com/journal/Manga-Studio-Walkthrough-Part-2-3D-305366109 http://draconianrain.deviantart.com/journal/Manga-Studio-Walkthrough-Part-3-Wavy-Text-Text-305375882 http://draconianrain.deviantart.com/journal/Manga-Studio-EX-Tutorial-From-Sketch-to-Finish-321648109 http://draconianrain.deviantart.com/journal/Manga-Studio-Why-Are-my-tones-showing-up-gray-306389127 http://miwasketch.blog.fc2.com/blog-entry-13.html Hopefully you'll find these helpful Happy drawing!