Drawing my own pony best programs and such...

[Oh Akatosh why 43]

So i'm considering drawing my own OC and every video iv'e ever seen on youtube use's pencils and paper or some kind of expensive drawing program. Although i may be a n00b for asking this as i'm most likely just to lazy to search past the first page of google, What would the best free drawing for ponies be? A few other questions i have are, what exactly are vectors? iv'e heard of them in mathematics and rocket science for example: pointing a rocket at the pro-grade vector means your pointing in the direction your going, What's the difference between vectors and other art styles? And what is the best/definitive guide for drawing ponies?

 

 

So if anypony could provide answers to one or more of these questions i'd be very thankful.

 

 

 

Preemptive nuclear thanks.

 

-DoctorWhoAreYouvian(42)

 

P.S any other good videos for drawing ponies?

 

P.P.S links would be appreciated 

[GaleFenrir 281]

If you intend on doing digital art, you don't need an expensive program like Photoshop. There is a free alternative call GIMP, and there are also vector illustration programs such as Inkscape. As to what vectors are... well, you know the show style right? How it's all animated in flash, with thick outlines and curvy shapes and filled in colors? Well, basically, vector art is art made of mathematically defined shapes and lines. Whereas the other type of digital images, called raster, are defined by pixels. Have you ever played or seen the old arcade game Asteroids? Well, that was some primitive vector graphics there.

 

As for guides, well, I don't have any links handy. What I do have, is this handy dandy reference for pony anatomy:

 

 

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[...] What would the best free drawing [program] for ponies be? 

 

The best free program would be Pencil and Paper! . . . What? Don't look at me like that, I have reasons that I do! 

The reason why I suggest sticking with the good 'ol traditional method is because not only is it the most affordable but it's much easier to learn how to draw with pencil and paper in comparison to jumping straight to digital. If you draw in digital you'll not only be struggling with proportions and other factors, but you'll be struggling with a medium which you may feel as though you have no real control of. It's not impossible to draw in the digital if you dive straight in, it'll just be quite difficult.

 

Gale explained the next part I was going to do so I won't go in depth. Danke Fenrir 

 

When it comes to tutorials and other goodies I'd suggest visiting the link in my signature and also visit Equestria Daily's Tutorial Codex. 

[Oh Akatosh why 43]

If you intend on doing digital art, you don't need an expensive program like Photoshop. There is a free alternative call GIMP, and there are also vector illustration programs such as Inkscape. As to what vectors are... well, you know the show style right? How it's all animated in flash, with thick outlines and curvy shapes and filled in colors? Well, basically, vector art is art made of mathematically defined shapes and lines. Whereas the other type of digital images, called raster, are defined by pixels. Have you ever played or seen the old arcade game Asteroids? Well, that was some primitive vector graphics there.

 

As for guides, well, I don't have any links handy. What I do have, is this handy dandy reference for pony anatomy:

Thanks, So basically pixels are dot's and vectors are lines? At any rate thanks for recommending gimp as i'm downloading it right now.

[Mikestar 346]

In vector programs you use a 'pen tool' which defines a line from one point to another, and when you join them into a shape you can fill it with colour.

 

In rastor images you generally use a paint brush or air brush tool, which generates pixels on the screen and you can get more light and shade, special effects, etc. with this. If you zoom in on a raster image it gets 'rasterised' as in the individual pixels can become boxy and obvious where as a vector image can be enlarged to any size, even bill boards size, and always looks clear.  This is cuz it's mathematically based rather than pixel based.

 

I actually use a combo of hand drawing and digital with my art, (which granted, isn't particularly advanced). i'll draw the idea and outlines on paper, scan it in, then draw over it in photoshop. I don't h ave a vector program to work with at the moment but when I've worked in adobe Illustrator in the past, did the same thing. Scanned in and drew over.

 

I also like seeing just the hand drawn art that people have done.

 

To me, art shouldn't just be a carbon copy of a still of the show. I like when the artist adds a bit of artistic licence to it, or makes it their own.

 

Mikestar

[GaleFenrir 281]

Thanks, So basically pixels are dot's and vectors are lines? At any rate thanks for recommending gimp as i'm downloading it right now.

Pixels are dots with individual color values. Vector graphics have the advantage of being infinitely scale-able because they are defined mathematically with points that form lines, and lines which form shapes. Raster graphics are better for painterly images while vectors are better for graphical(in this meaning, as in having thick lines; such as a graphic novel which are inked in with black pen and colored) illustrations.

[Jalaton 155]

Ooh another option is Paint Tool Sai. That's what I'm drawing my oc on. It doesn't have as many options (tools) as gimp but I've found that it runs faster. At least on my computer. Oh yeah, but Sai does have a lot of things it tries to get you to download with it. Maybe I just got a bad download?

[Oh Akatosh why 43]

Thinking about how little i know i probably should try my luck at hoof drawing it for now but once again thanks so much for all this help.

[Shining Wing 201]

Hi. Vector artist here. I've been doing this for a few months, so I'm not too bad at it.

 

Here's some nice pages that will be really useful if you get into vectoring:

http://zedrin.deviantart.com/art/Vectors-and-You-376536015/

http://mlp-vectorclub.deviantart.com/

http://www.reddit.com/r/MLPvectors/

 

Regardless of what style you use, this place will help a lot, with loads of great tutorials and artists willing to give advice.

 

Sorry that I don't have else much to say, I pretty much just came here to link some resources!