It Seems Like All Of The Resources I Can Easily Find Online For Identifying Wolves Vs Dogs Are Either

2d Animation - Smearing

What is smearing? Smearing is a multitude of techniques used in animation to bridge two or more frames to create the illusion of motion through methods like blurring, warping, distortion, and a few others.

I wanted to start of with a fresh animation to demonstrate some movements.

It looks like it can definitely use some extra information to convey the motion of the sword. This is where we starting thinking about how to smear the object(s).

The most common approach that I’ve noticed that animators take, especially newer animators, is that they warp the whole object. As in they have a point A, and a point B, and then they just have a “mass” of implied motion in between those points.

Here’s a still shot

It works quite well with objects like swords. So here’s what my attempt looked like.

It definitely helped explain the movements more, but I’m not sure I liked it.

Thankfully there are other “types” of smears that we can look at to try to see if they fit in this particular animation.

The next one I wanted to try was “speedlining.” This is basically when you distort the edges or add speedlines to the edges to make the object appear in motion.

Here’s an example

and the still shot:

notices how the edges appear more sketchy. This one is really common and it can be executed in different ways.

Here’s my attempt

I really like this type of smearing, even though it still lacks some of the motion that the first iteration lacked. The speedlines really add character to the motion that would otherwise be missing in a normal warp, but I still needed that smear to bring it to the point where it needed to be.

So here’s what some call “doubling.” (and just as a side comment, I don’t think any of these have “official names” other than just smearing)

Here’s the still shot

This was a really well executed smear which I don’t think would have worked the same if you would have just warped the faces.

Here’s another slightly different execution

with the still shot

It’s like a distortion mixed with doubling, and that’s what I like about smears.. you can mix and match things you feel would work in the particular scene.

So here’s my mix n’ match smear.

Not the best execution, but for our purposes I think it works well.

Motion blurring is really powerful as well. Film uses it all the time, as does 2d animation. Notice the force of the impact being pronounced with the added blur at the head.

Here’s the still shot

There are a few other smears I thought were interesting because it just speaks to the way our brain interprets these frames without even considering the logical implications of the individual frames.

Here’s one example

I don’t know if you caught that, but here is the still shot:

The guy has a knob for a hand. It works so well, you don’t stop to think about implication of that hand’s morphology. 

Here’s another one that doesn’t make too much sense.

Like what is this

That’s Imaishi. It’s part of why we love that animator so much. It’s part of his style and character. It conveys an emotion that would otherwise be absent in a “realistic” smear. Animation doesn’t have to make sense. It just has to look good.

Since Toffee knows how it all turns out, he could have done this.

Would you ever do a simple tutorial of how you draw horses? I want to make centaur OCs but lord horses are difficult creatures to doodle 😭

Mmmm there are so many guides that cover what I do, and I reallydon’t do anything more than those. Still use the whole blocks and sticks andform building and whatnot. And a buttload of references. Anything I could say different would kinda step beyond the stage of simplicity?

To offer something though I would like, suggest tweaking the use of circles whenit comes to drawing horses. Or anything, really. Circles are great and highly accessible for fast, generaldrawing, but few natural things are perfectly round. Look at a horse from thefront or back - it’s square and flat and meaty and saggy too, depending on yourangle.

So like, I dunno, if you wanna step it up a notch, trychanging your use of building-circles into something like this

And especially practice being able to see these shapes indimension

And then piece them together. The triangle will really help guide the line up. Highly recommend.

Honestly I just follow the same gist of Hubedihubbe’s quicktut (please check it out, very good points made, much cleaner, actually labelled) so I kind of feel like I’m parroting here but.. I break down the rest inlines and diamonds.

As a personal preference, I like marking in the shoulderblade to elbow and the hip to knee, as they create pretty important shapes towardshorse recognition. If something keeps looking off, check your leg length. A super rough way to get a close idea of what you need can be found in using most of the shoulder block for a landmark? It’s not perfect maths, it’s a rough tell. The hind legs are then worked out via the red line, setting the hocks above the intersection across the knees 

And uh, it goes on from there. You gotta look at pictures, dothe study, and learn the meats. No real other way around that part.

There’s a horse bod.

But the reason of learning how to see those shapes indimension is so that you can push your poses further! Try piecing it together with your front-view knowledge. Andlook at references, always! 

Shoulders are pretty narrow compared to the belly and hindquarters, unless you start looking into the draft breeds - then both ends more or less square up together. But moving on, more leggies are slapped on that thing

And fleshed out with all that meat knowledge :P (I know I haven’t gone into heads but this was about centaurs anyway. This guy just felt like he needed one)

And when it comes to practiceand learning, don’t be afraid to simply drawthese shapes directly over an image. It will help familiarise you with howthese base forms interact with one another, how far they can squash and stretchand look at a whole variety of angles. It’s just practice!

Doing that helps to gain asolid concept of the subject, so that when you do set out on your own you canfind that convincing territory.

So hey, this has been a very long and terrible not-tutorial. More like insight or something, and would only be helpful if you’re somewhat familiar with horses and already got the fundamentals of drawing down pat, since I skipped over a lot. 

Haven’t drawn a horse before though? I recommend you the Shrimp method

Anyway, hope all this was kinda interesting

Question. Do you have any specific resources you used to learn art and painting, etc?? Your style and skill is so so good and I'd love to see how you Do It

oh, gosh. i dont think i could ever answer this question in a truly satisfying manner, but i’ll try my best to do it!

learning art in general has just been a road of trial and error for me! looots of trial and error. im a ‘self-taught’ artist & i’ve been drawing since i was a toddler, so i’ve accumulated certain skills just bc i’ve been doing it for so dang long

that being said, i’ll share some links in a moment! but first, some advice from me to you, anon. just.. go wild. try new things and dont set too many rules for yourself, yknow what i mean? nowadays i tend to use lots of weird textured brushes + work on only one layer (which i hear is quite bad for when youre working on commissions, but i paint for myself so i dont gotta worry about correcting things all the time), and as a person struggling w/ a pretty severe case of OCD, i find it so liberating to be Forced to not give a shit through that painting method. just have fun! allow yourself to be messy, to make mistakes, and remember that you can just paint over them later. some of your ‘mistakes’ might even end up being the things that make your drawing look more interesting/organic, in the end! the ‘happy little accidents’ mindset just makes the whole process much more enjoyable imo :]

ALSO, an important thing to me was finding the right brushes for painting. just dl a shit ton of the ones that look fun to you (or make your own if your drawing program allows it!) and make an effort to try out each and every one of them at least once!! the brushes certainly arent that important-- you could paint a masterpiece with a simple square brush-- but more often than not i find my style being subtly influenced by the brushes that i use at the moment. its a thing worth considering!

another thing i should note is that, while im mostly happy with my art nowadays, i AM still learning, and i dont think i’ll ever stop learning, so, like, check in in a couple of years for some better tips i guess asuhdfuashfusdf

anyways, here are some resources that are/were very helpful to me:

when i need to browse for general art tips/tutorials/cheat sheets/etc, i usually go here: [link 1], [link 2], [link 3], [link 4], [link 5], 

now, here are some specific posts ive collected over the years that really made me rethink how i approach composition and the like in my, uh, more ‘serious’ paintings: [link 1], [link 2], [link 3], [link 4], [link 5]

this [link] video series is a Godsend, its got some very good advice AND its got nice editing too, my hellbrain was actually able to focus and learn smth from a video tutorial for once

heres a nice post about practice and improvement that you should deffo read before using all of these resources

i also find it very helpful to just.. look at art that inspires you/ that you find appealing Right before painting? that way all of the techniques you might pick up while staring at other peoples art will stay fresh in your mind, so you’ll be more likely to try em out. (setting a drawing that you really like as a phone/desktop bg works well too since youll inevitably stare at it quite often)

i also really like seeing other peoples process, so i tend to watch speedpaints/analyse process gifs & photosets a lot! seeing how messy and abstract most drawings are in the early stages of painting is really comforting/reassuring to me :] heres a couple for u: [link 1], [link 2], [link 3], [link 4], [link 5], [link 6], [link 7], [link 8], and finally, [link 9] and [link 10] (3, 9 and 10 are the ones that inspire me the most atm)

as a bonus, heres one from me as well! (usually i only post these on my patreon, but ik times are tough rn and any of your spare money could (and should) go to a far better cause) im putting it under a read more bc it contains blood and self-impalement, so beware! (bloodborne bosses, man) i might make a speedpaint in the future, too, so watch out for that!

Hey friends! Meg here for TUTOR TUESDAY! Today we take a look at the neck and how it connects to the head and shoulders! Thanks for your patience! If you have any tutorial recs send ‘em in here or my personal. Now go forth and I’ll see you next week!

Do you like Mario RPGs? Paper Mario? Do you like stories about the power of friendship? If so, have I got something for you!

I made a huge set of color keys based off the game Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, a game that I’ve really loved since I was a teen. This is a super self indulgent project that is very much an interpretation from the heart, so I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

Below is a link to where you can download (click the download icon in the top right corner of the google page!) and read it! Thank you!

https://drive.google.com/open?id=14gbceNpdkB380knvofHFhnfRqSlS8xUl

(If the PDF quality is fuzzy, just zoom out once, and back in again to make it load!)

How to be a white or non-black ally at a rally

via  @laurielovelugo 

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How to help Amazônia:

You can donate to SOS Amazônia which is one among the 100 NGOs selected as “The Largest NGOs in Brazil”.

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If you donate only $2,30 EUR (10 reais) you’re helping a lot. About people saying “the minimum value is $10”: Even if you’re not from Brazil you can donate in REAL instead of donating in USD or EUR via Paypal, so… YES, you can donate less than 10 dollars or euros. (Just don’t change the currency to USD or EUR, Paypal converts your dollars/euros to reais.)

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