How to paint gold tutorial by *ConceptCookie
And I found this very helpful just by looking at it. I was never good at coloring gold.
(via oncebutt)
Ultimate Writing Resource List
a massively extended version of ruthlesscalculus’ post
General Tips
- 34 Writing Tips that will make you a Better Writer
- 50 Free resources that will improve your writing skills
- 5 ways to get out of the comfort zone and become a stronger writer
- 10 ways to avoid Writing Insecurity
- The Writer’s Guide to Overcoming Insecurity
- The Difference Between Good Writers and Bad Writers
- You’re Not Hemingway - Developing Your Own Style
- 7 Ways to use Brain Science to Hook Readers and Reel them In
- 8 Short Story Tips from Kurt Vonnegut
- How to Show, Not Tell
- 5 Essential Story Ingredients
- How to Write Fiction that grabs your readers from page one
- Why research is important in writing
- Make Your Reader Root for Your Main Character
- Writing Ergonomics (Staying Comfortable Whilst Writing)
- The Importance of Body Language
Character Development
- 10 days of Character Building
- Name Generators
- Name Playground
- Universal Mary Sue Litmus Test
- Seven Common Character Types
- Handling a Cast of Thousands Part 1 - Getting To Know Your Characters
- Web Resources for Developing Characters
- Building Fictional Characters
- Fiction Writer’s Character Chart
- Character Building Workshop
- Tips for Characterization
- Character Chart for Fiction Writers
- Villains are people too but…
- How to Write a Character Bible
- Character Development Exercises
- All Your Characters Talk the Same - And They’re Not A Hivemind!
- Medieval Names Archive
- Sympathy Without Saintliness
- Family Echo (Family Tree Maker)
- Behind The Name
- 100 Character Development Questions for Writers
- Aether’s Character Development Worksheet
- The 12 Common Archetypes
- Six Types of Courageous Characters
- Kazza’s List of Character Secrets - Part 1, Part 2
- Creating Believable Characters With Personality
- Body Language Cheat Sheet
- Creating Fictional Characters Series
- Three Ways to Avoid Lazy Character Description
- 7 Rules for Picking Names for Fictional Characters
- Character Development Questionnaire
- How to Create Fictional Characters
- Character Name Resources
- Character Development Template
- Character Development Through Hobbies
- Character Flaws List
- 10 Questions for Creating Believable Characters
- Ari’s Archetype Series
- How to Craft Compelling Characters
- List of 200 Character Traits
- Writing Characters of the Opposite Sex
- Making Your Characters Likable
- Do you really know your characters?
- Character Development: Virtues
- Character Development: Vices
- Character Morality Alignment
- List of Negative Personality Traits
- List of Positive Personality Traits
- List of Emotions - Positive
- List of Emotions - Negative
- Loon’s Character Development Series - Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
- Phobia List A-L (Part 1), M-Z (Part 2)
- 30 Day In Depth Character Development Meme
- Words for Emotions based on Severity
- Eight Bad Characters
- High Level Description of the Sixteen Personality Types
Female Characters
- How Not to Write Female Characters
- Writing Female Characters
- How to write empowering female characters
- Why I write strong female characters
- Red Flags for Female Characters Written by Men
- Writing strong female characters
- The Female Character Flowchart
- Eight Heroine Archetypes
Male Characters
Tips for Specific Characters
- Writing A Vampire
- Writing Pansexual Characters
- Writing Characters on the Police Force
- Writing Drunk Characters
- Writing A Manipulative Character
- Writing A Friends With Benefits Relationship
- Writing A Natural Born Leader
- Writing A Flirtatious Character
- Writing A Nice Character
- Fiction Writing Exercises for Creating Villains
- Five Traits to Contribute to an Epic Villain
- Writing Villains that Rock
- Writing British Characters
- How To Write A Character With A Baby
- On Assassin Characters
Dialogue
- It’s Not What They Say…
- Top 8 Tips for Writing Dialogue
- Speaking of Dialogue
- The Great Said Debate
- He Said, She Said, Who Said What?
- How to Write Dialogue Unique to Your Characters
- Writing Dialogue: Go for Realistic, Not Real-Life
Point of View
Plot, Conflict, Structure and Outline
- Writing A Novel Using the Snowflake Method
- Effectively Outlining Your Novel
- Conflict and Character Within Story Structure
- Outlining Your Plot
- Ideas, Plots and Using the Premise Sheets
- How To Write A Novel
- Creating Conflict and Sustaining Suspense
- Plunge Right In…Into Your Story, That Is
- Tips for Creating a Compelling Plot
- 36 (plus one) Dramatic Situations
- The Evil Overlord Devises A Plot: Excerpt from Stupid Plot Tricks
- Conflict Test
- What is Conflict?
- Monomyth
- The Hero’s Journey: Summary of Steps
- Outline Your Novel in Thirty Minutes
- Plotting Without Fears
- Novel Outlining 101
- Writing The Perfect Scene
- One-Page Plotting
- The Great Swampy Middle
- How Can You Know What Belongs In Your Book?
- Create A Plot Outline in 8 Easy Steps
- How to Organize and Develop Ideas for Your Novel
- Create Structure in your novel using index cards
- Choosing the best outline method for you
- Hatch’s Plot Bank
Setting & Worldbuilding
- Magical Word Builder’s Guide
- I Love The End Of The World
- World Building 101
- The Art of Description: Eight Tips to Help Bring Your Settings to Life
- Creating the Perfect Setting - Part 1
- Creating a Believable World
- Setting
- Character and Setting Interactions
- Maps Workshop - Developing the Fictional World Through Mapping
- World Builders Project
- How To Create Fantasy Worlds
- Creating Fantasy and Science Fiction Worlds
Creativity Boosters* denotes prompts
- *Creative Writing Prompts
- *Ink Provoking
- *Story Starter
- *Story Spinner
- *Story Kitchen
- *Language is a Virus
- *The Dabbling Mum
- Quick Story Idea Generator
- Solve Your Problems By Simply Saying Them Out Loud
- Busting Your Writing Rut
- Creative Acceleration: 11 Tips To Engineer A Productive Flow
- Writing Inspiration, Or Sex on a Bicycle
- The Seven Major Beginner Mistakes
- Complete Your First Book with these 9 Simple Writing Habits
- Free Association, Active Imagination, Twilight Imaging
- Random Book Title Generator
- Finishing Your Novel
- Story Starters & Idea Generators
- Words to Use More Often
Revision & Grammar
- How To Rewrite
- Editing Recipe
- Cliche Finder
- Revising Your Novel: Read What You’ve Written
- Writing 101: Revising A Novel
- 20 Common Grammar Mistakes That (Almost) Everyone Makes
- Synonyms for the Most Commonly Used Words of the English Language
- Grammar Urban Legends
Tools & Software
- Tip Of My Tongue - Find the word you’re looking for
- Write or Die - Stay motivated
- Stay Focused - Tool for Chrome, lock yourself out of distracting websites
- My Writing Nook - Online Text Editor, Free
- Bubbl.us - Online Mind Map Application, Free
- Family Echo - Online Family Tree Maker, Free
- Freemind - Mind Map Application; Free; Windows, Mac, Linux, Portable
- Xmind - Mind Map Application; Free; Windows, Mac, Linux, Portable
- Liquid Story Binder - Novel Organization and Writing Application; free trial, ; Windows, Portable
- Scrivener - Novel Organization and Writing Application; free trial, ; Mac
- SuperNotecard - Novel Organization and Writing Application; free trial, ; Windows, Mac, Linux, portable
- yWriter - Novel Organization and Writing Application; free; Windows, Linux, portable
- JDarkRoom - Minimalist Text Editing Application; free; Windows, Mac, Linux, portable
- AutoRealm - Map Creation Application; free; Windows, Linux with Wine
Specific Help
(via cawaza)
unicorn-meat-is-too-mainstream:
Beautiful Photoshop Sketching Portraits by Sébastien THE BIG
(via apairofblueeyes)
Wally Wood’s 22 Panels That Always Work
I don’t believe that Woody put the examples together as a teaching aid for his assistants, but rather as a reminder to himself. He was always trying to kick himself to put less labor into the work! He had a framed motto on the wall, “Never draw anything you can copy, never copy anything you can trace, never trace anything you can cut out and paste up.” He hung the sheets with the panels on the wall of his studio to constantly remind himself to stop what he called “noodling.”
See also: Ivan Brunetti’s parody
(Thx to Andy Wales)
I used photoshop cs5 and this brushes
http://felicemelancholie.deviantart.com/gallery/37797515#/d54ah9r
(via indigoredroulette)
(via pekaunicorn)
How to use a tablet without hurting your wrist
This is a tutorial I’ve written two years ago. I still see a lot of people having problems with hand pains while using a tablet so I thought I might post in on tumblr where it should get to more people than on my LJ. If you use tablet you might want to look at it, if your friends use tablet you might want to show it to them.
Protect your hands and back before it’s too late~!!
Original text starts here:
I realized, that I’ve encountered many professional artists online that have problems with wrist that are caused by using tablet. No wonder: you can find tons of tutorials on graphic software, but you won’t find any on actual USING the tablet. Well, it is simple: you install the drivers, plug the tablet in, personalize the buttons, if you have any, and start drawing the same way as you did with the pencil, right?
Well… NO!
That is why I decided to write thisentrytutorial. Please, read if whether you’re just a beginner, or a professional that has been painting for longer than I have lived; the issue is much too grave for people living of making art to simply be ignored.
Textures: a guide
Textures: A guide
A graphic maker is nothing without textures. Textures can give a unique atmosphere to an image, they can make your graphic uplifting or sad, romantic or angsty. Even when simply coloring caps, textures might come in handy to enhance the colors or to deepen the contrast. You should know upfront that experimenting is the keyword, and that knowledge of textures comes with photoshop experience.
This guide covers the following topics:
1. Downloading and organizing textures
2. Different types of textures
3. Blend modes
4. Layer masks
5. When to use which texture
6. Tips and tricksThis guide might be updated with more chapters and more details eventually.
In this guide I’ll be using textures by the following texture makers: accio-glow, callmebrandon, emmelia, finnickscleverfingers, lookbackseeforward, mirand-ah, olmes, planets-bend-between-us, rosebein, shocklock, shriekingshacks, wicked-fate, and yellowlemon
Note to these texture makers: if you want your textures removed from this tutorial, just drop me a line. I’m totally okay with not using your textures as an example, but please do consider that I’m giving you all the credit. Thank you.
Warning: image and text heavy!
(via amorremanet)
Requested by chenipan - Movement & Dynamics
It’s all about that line of action! Dynamics Tutorial Gesture Drawing Lesson
omg i have the book that the spongebob ones are in
reference
(via zebeck)
Values in Composition
I’d just like to preface this with an apology for the lack of posts recently; I am drawing stuff but it’s mostly nothing I can show right now, so… sorry about that!
Anyway, here’s something I wanted to do a while back as an answer to a question I got, but didn’t get around to doing it until now. It’s a sort of guide to values in composition!
瞬間連写アクションポーズ―立ち回り・スタント・アクロバット [単行本]Real Action Pose Collection
A beautiful reference book. I bought mine from Kinokinuya when I was living in California.
They have published three books so far, the 2nd one is focusing on sword action and the third one has a female as the main fighter. I own the swords one and will be looking for the third book at SDCC.
(via drey)
Applying basic light theory to your art (aka “how to make ridiculously shiny stuff”)
In this mini-guide, I’m going to more or less explain how the heck you apply basic light theory on your art. But with a bit more exaggerated effects.
I am going to start off by using a reference photo I took myself in a museum I visited the other day.
This is a piece of Pyrite (aka “Fool’s Gold”) which is very reflective, and is pretty cool.
I used this as a reference and eye-ball copied it. Since most of the colors are pretty saturated, it wasn’t that hard to guess the colors. (I did not color pick from the photo - unless you are colorblind, you should learn to pick color only by observation. It’s good for your artistic eye.)
Here’s my painting of the pyrite. It’s not as textured or detailed as the reference, but turned out good enough. The orange light comes from a piece of table/wood beneath the pyrite that is not visible from the photo.
The shape of the object is a nice variation from the regular “sphere” that you always see in light-theory.
Now let’s apply there light sources on a portrait - makin it shiny shiny!
But first we should look up another reference!
This picture was done by the AMAZING Virtual Lighting Tool where you can add several light sources, change the placement of the “lamps”, even add colors and all kind of nice gadgets. This screenshot contains more or less the same lightsources that we got from the Pyrite painting.
Now this time I did use the color picker - but not from the photograph, but from the painting I did earlier. This was a really fun experiment and a great way to practice shiny objects.
(via cosmicbadarsery)