Autumn Blaze 2

[Kevin Tang 2,426]

Second drawing of Autumn made by me in Ms. Paint

This time, I used tracing which turned out pretty well.....I think

[Splashee 28,566]

In MSPaint? Wow! That's kinda too good for MSPaint. You should use better software for your talent.

 

Also the sketch is awesome!

[Cl0udChaser 3,006]

I like the sketch. Well done.

[Kevin Tang 2,426]

15 hours ago, Splashee said:

In MSPaint? Wow! That's kinda too good for MSPaint. You should use better software for your talent.

 

Also the sketch is awesome!

Oh, really? Thanks! And yes, I'm trying to learn how to use a better drawing program, which is Adobe Illustrator

Won't say it's talent though,  it's pretty average for a drawing and it's also tracing so.....yeah

[Splashee 28,566]

7 hours ago, Kevin Tang said:

Oh, really? Thanks! And yes, I'm trying to learn how to use a better drawing program, which is Adobe Illustrator

Won't say it's talent though,  it's pretty average for a drawing and it's also tracing so.....yeah

I have to be honest, Adobe Illustrator (which is the best when it comes to vector art), is a nightmare to work with because of the hit detection. Selecting anchor points is really difficult (you keep missing or selecting the wrong one), and a lot of time goes into reselecting shapes, getting into the right layers and so on.

Most of my art (see my Splashee art in this forum) is done in Adobe Illustrator though. I do draw much faster in Adobe Photoshop, and most of the sketches I do are done in Photoshop as well.

[Kevin Tang 2,426]

3 hours ago, Splashee said:

Most of my art (see my Splashee art in this forum) is done in Adobe Illustrator though. I do draw much faster in Adobe Photoshop, and most of the sketches I do are done in Photoshop as well.

Wait, you can draw in photohop? What's the difference between it and Ai?

[Splashee 28,566]

59 minutes ago, Kevin Tang said:

Wait, you can draw in photohop? What's the difference between it and Ai?

Photoshop is like MSPaint, but you can actually draw realistic stuff because of the millions of tools available like the different brushes, filters, layers, and blending effects.

Illustrator is just for vector graphics. You get scalable graphics, clean lines, good for designing logos and other more simplistic looking shapes, which can be rotated, duplicated, and merged together to make more complex shapes. Much harder to do shading. There are linear gradient tools, and a mesh tool that is so crap that I wish it didn't exist (again, bad because of anchor points not hit-detectable). In Illustrator, the best tool is the manual transform where you can set a position of a line or a shape. Not very friendly to actually draw. It is also the art style used by the real show (only most is drawn in Adobe Flash, I think, it was probably done in Illustrator though)...

 

With Illustrator, you get scalable graphics (that's what vector graphics are all about), which means there is no limits to the size of the drawing (click on the link, then click on the image to resize to to max size in the web browser:
HugeHugeHugePicOfSplashee

 

Edited September 14, 2019 by Splashee

[Kevin Tang 2,426]

Well, I'm not really looking into drawing realistic ponies

Matching the show style is my goal from the beginning

[Splashee 28,566]

37 minutes ago, Kevin Tang said:

Well, I'm not really looking into drawing realistic ponies

Matching the show style is my goal from the beginning

I think you are going for Illustrator then. You do the first step as sketches anyways, so there is no harm to use Illustrator up next. You paste the sketch image into a layer, and lock that layer. Then you start tracing lines in a new layer on top. You can use transparency on the layer to see through to the sketch.
There is a lot to learn.

I was looking after the old puppets for the fan project Double Rainboom, but the download links were those servers raided by FBI a long long time ago, so no way of getting those. I only vaguely remember the original puppets were done in Illustrator before they were moved into Flash for animation, I cannot confirm this. I looked through Zachary Rich's Youtube channel for the rigging tutorials, but I found no proof about Illustrator in there.

So at this point, it is either Illustrator or Flash. Question is, which one makes MLP G4 characters the best??? I never ever worked with Flash so I can't answer. The video "My Little Pony Friendship is Magic - Behind the Scenes" shows a program I can't recognize, while they are sketching ponies, and when they are doing the outlines, I can't tell the program either. I can only see they are sitting on Windows XP machines.

Edited September 14, 2019 by Splashee

[Splashee 28,566]

In Illustrator, you trace the lines, then you set the thickness of them, and there is a line width tool to make the lines thicker at places.

 

But if you were to choose Photoshop instead, you can paint the outlines with a thicker brush, and then erase the thickness at the edges using the eraser tool, to make that same appearance, kinda, because it gets less official looking when manually painting lines. I am doing it in my speed drawing here (this is done in Photoshop):

 

Edited September 14, 2019 by Splashee

[Kevin Tang 2,426]

@Splashee I will probably never draw that way digitally, since I am pretty bad with mouses, coupled with the fact that my mouse.....is half broken

But, as an alternative, I'm just going to draw traditionally first and then trace it in Ai, like I did with Paint

[Splashee 28,566]

7 hours ago, Kevin Tang said:

@Splashee I will probably never draw that way digitally, since I am pretty bad with mouses, coupled with the fact that my mouse.....is half broken

But, as an alternative, I'm just going to draw traditionally first and then trace it in Ai, like I did with Paint

I use a tablet when I draw. But when I trace with Illustrator, I use my mouse for accuracy.