Here’s a short tutorial on how to sign up and navigate Lofter, which is like the Chinese version of Tumblr! It’s not as popular as Weibo, but you can find a variety of Chinese artists there. Anyway you can choose to use either the app or the site ->
APP TUTORIAL
Firstly just download the app from your app store
If you are using the app to register, you will come to this page:
Click 注册 and it will lead to this:
You can register an account using your WeChat/ QQ/ Weibo account (or register using a Chinese phone number, which I assume all of us don’t have). I registered using WeChat, just click on the icon and your account will be set up! After that just key in your username and you are done.
On the app page the icons at the bottom of the page are home, discover, news and your account. To search for the users/ tags you want to follow go to the discover page and click on search
Anyway things get kind of tricky here because most of the usernames and tags are written in Chinese… I’ll just link Djun’s and a few other artists’ blog below so you can check them out without typing in Chinese 😂😂
SITE TUTORIAL
Similarly if you use the Lofter site to register an account you will see a similar page (you can use your email to register an account if you are using the site!):
If you used WeChat to set up your account like me click on the WeChat button and there will be a QR code available for you to scan:
Just scan it with your WeChat app and you will be able to log in, you will be directed to your Lofter dashboard:
Anyway here’s Djun Lofter and a couple of other BL/interesting artists for you to check out if you are interested!
yo here’s a useful tip from your fellow art ho cynellis… use google sketchup to create a model of the room/building/town you’re trying to draw… then take a screenshot & use it as a reference! It’s simple & fun!
Sketchup is incredibly helpful. I can’t recommend it enough.
There’s a 3D model warehouse where you can download all kinds of stuff so you don’t have to build everything from scratch.
reblog to save a life
This is an incomplete tutorial, and it drives me crazy every
time I see it come around.
We live in a pretty great digital age and we have access to
a ton of amazing tools that artists in past generations couldn’t even dream of,
but a lot of people look at a cool trick and only learn half of the process of
using it.
Here’s the missing part of this tutorial:
How do you populate your backgrounds?
Well, here’s the answer:
If the focus is the environment, you must show a person in relation to
that environment.
The examples above are great because they show how to use the
software itself, but each one just kind of “plops” the character in front of
their finished product with no regard of the person’s relation to their
environment.
How do you fix this?
Well, here’s the simplest solution:
This is a popular trick used by professional storyboard and
comic artists alike when they’re quickly planning compositions. It’s simple and
it requires you to do some planning before you sit down to crank out that
polished, final version of your work, but it will be the difference between a background
and an environment.
Even if your draftsmanship isn’t that great (like mine),
people can be more immersed in the story you tell if you just make it feel like
there is a world that exists completely separate from the one in which they
currently reside – not just making a backdrop the characters stand in front of.
Your creations live in a unique world, and it is as much a character as
any other member of the cast. Make it as believable as they are.
Great comments and tutorials!
I’m a 3d artist and have been exploring the possibilities of using 3d as reference for 2d poses. I want to add a couple of tips and things!
Sketchup is very useful for environment references, and I assume it’s reasonably easy to learn. If you’re interested in going above and beyond, I highly recommend learning a proper 3d modeling program to help with art, especially because you can very easily populate a scene or location with characters!
Using 3ds Max I can pretty quickly construct an environment for reference. But going beyond that, I can also pose a pretty simple ‘CAT’ armature (known in 3d as a rig) straight into the scene, which can be totally customized, from various limbs, tails, wings, whatever, to proportions, and also can be modeled onto and expanded upon (for an example, you could 3d sculpt a head reference for your character and then attach it to the CAT rig, so you have a reference for complex face angles!)
The armature can also be posed incredibly easily. I know programs exist for stuff like this – Manga Studio, Design Doll – but posing characters in these programs is always an exercise in frustration and very fiddly imo. A simple 3d rig is impossibly easy to pose.
By creating an environment and dropping my character rig into it, I have an excellent point of reference when it comes to drawing the scene!
Not only that, but I can also view the scene from whatever angle I could ever want or need, including the character and their pose/position relative to the environment.
We can even quickly and easily expand this scene to include more characters!
Proper 3d modeling software is immensely powerful, and if you wanted to, you could model a complex environment that occurs regularly in your comic or illustration work (say, a castle interior, or an outdoor forest environment) and populate the scene with as many perspective-grounded characters as you need!
Just a little taste of what’s going on at my workplace right now.
We have been fighting for a raise because a lot of people who work at Disney have to work 60+ hours a week just to get by.
What was their response? “Ok, everyone gets a bonus. $1000. But not all at once. $500 now and $500 at the end of the year.” (in case some people get fired or quit, so they don’t have to pay the full amount to those people).
Of course, we were like “No, that’s not what we said we wanted. We want a PERMANENT RAISE.”
So Disney was like OK, fine, whoever is NOT part of the union fighting for a raise gets the $1000 bonus 🙂
Meanwhile, we are still fighting for a raise…
I’m sorry, this has 62 notes and that is INCREDIBLE BULLSHIT.
I’ve been watching Disney since I was 4 years old. So basically since i was 4 years old, Disney’s been making a profit off of me; the same way they make a profit off of the average 4 year old.
I don’t care whatdystopian madness of a world you live in, if your primary audience is CHILDREN, you are ethically freakin obligated to behave and treat your employees in a humane manner.
You don’t get to make literally billions of dollars off of kids’ wonder and awe and hope in the world while exploiting and contributing to the suffering of 100,000+ human beings.
You don’t get to fucking do that.
>:[ spread this. What the fuck, Disney?
I am a Disney Fan, a D23 member, and shareholder…and I stand with the cast members. If Disney does not change, then I will not vote for Iger or the rest of the board and ask others to do the same.
When I was a child, from the time I was about four and could understand things, my mom told me and my brother that we should have a secret word. That way, if we were ever in trouble or felt unsafe and we didn’t want the people around us to know we needed her to come get us, we could let her know. So she let us pick the word and my brother and I chose the phrase “peanut butter cups.” (I’m happy to share the phrase now since both my brother and I are adults now).
I used the phrase twice in my life. Once, I was at a friends house when I eight years old. Her dad got really drunk and was throwing things against the wall. I was really scared and I didn’t want to draw attention to myself on the phone when I called my mom to come get me because I didn’t know if he would get more violent if I asked her to come get me. So I called her and was calm and after a couple minutes I asked “Hey mommy, did you get me those peanut butter cups from the store?” And she said “I’ll be right there.” And she came and got me within minutes.
Second, I was a teenager spending the night at a friends house. Her brother and dad were drinking and they started talking about things that made me uncomfortable – ie: what they liked to do to women. My friend didn’t seem perturbed and said that was normal for them and that I shouldn’t worry. But I was worried because they were really drunk and I was 15 and the only ‘woman’ around that wasn’t related to them. I went in my friends room, told her I needed to call my mom and say goodnight. Before I hung up with her I asked “Next time we go to the store, can we get some peanut butters cups? I’ve been craving them.” And she came and got me, just like that.
Two incidents, one as a young child, one years later as a teen. Don’t discredit this stuff, it fucking works. My brother used it a few times too. Let your child pick the word and no never, ever, ever, ever get mad at them for using it no matter what it is.
lanablack 