literally most things that people write off as just ‘textures’ to use in graphics are stolen & unsourced material created by artists or photographers NOT meant to be used as elements in projects without royalty payments. you can say ‘it’s just random tumblr posts they don’t care’ but you wouldn’t want someone to take your work and edit into their work so they can be praised for their beautiful style and creativity even if they just post it on social media w/o profit, would you??
you see it on here a lot especially in (i won’t link anything but i’m sure you know what i mean) those album track ‘aesthetics’ posts, au ‘aesthetic’ posts (you see these less in kpop, but where people use non-royalty free images to kinda craft a visual au), and even just rather typical graphics that have a lot of ‘texture’ elements. and texture packs too!! that’s often where the problem starts; people just collect images (often literal art), compile them in a folder w/o sources, then insist no one can repost those images w/o crediting the person who compiled them. what???
SO may i suggest some places you can get FREE, ROYALTY-FREE elements that are totally legal to use
Successful writing depends on building a emotional connection with your readers.
Creating that connection can difficult enough in the real world… so
what happens when we throw a completely fictional reality into the mix?
This tutorial introduces the concept of worldbuilding:
the creation of convincing fictional realities! We’ll
talk about constructing something as all-encompassing as a
species, culture, or planet, based on the writing style that works best
for you. We’ll also cover some important do’s and don’t’s so you
don’t lose sight of the big (or tiny) pictures. Additionally, the 11-paged supplement worksheet will give you a creative workout and
challenge you to solve problems and answer your own personal questions
in order to build the most convincing worlds of all. Have fun!
My Patreon tutorials are unlocked to the public 6 months after their original
publication month. You can find the full high-resolution archive of monthly tutorials at
my Patreon!Thanks again to my Patrons for supporting me in the creation of my own worldbuilding-heavy comics, The Meek and Mare Internum.
hi! sorry to hear about the stressful times you’re going through 😦 i went thru something similar after school and after my first internship.
i think your current biggest obstacle is not knowing what you want to do. without that, how can you look for work you might like? so i’d do a little introspection with that. when i was figuring out my path, i looked at art i tended to gravitate to and look at my own habits. i also looked at professional work i liked and was drawn toward certain jobs but not others. so take some time to figure that out, and if nothing else, take a job somewhere and see if you like it or not. you can feel out the landscape a bit if you want first.
take a look around you. what is the job market like where you are? what are your friends doing? who is hiring? do you know any recruiters? dig around and look for job postings, upcoming conventions, etc. don’t be afraid to “cold email” recruiters or art directors….or even someone on twitter or tumblr. if you’re professional, humble, and have good work to show, im sure someone would be willing to give you some people you can contact for jobs.
if you’re in the LA area, dreamworks is currently hiring. check it out here.
keep up to date on job postings with animationjobs @ twitter, and places like linkedin and stuff. some ADs on twitter also post job postings.
good luck, anon. don’t give up!! it may take some time but it will be worth it in the end. getting going is always the hardest part, it wont be this difficult ever again. i believe in you 100%!!
I’ve been doing a lot of movement studies lately to finally get the “full figures and dynamic poses give me headache” problem out of my way. These are in large part referenced from invaluable motion sequences by Eadweard Muybridge.
Of course I imagine it’s Corvo training, because it makes my life more beautiful.
I’ll give you a weird secret. After you put the glowing object on a dark background, surround the white parts with a halo of highly saturated color. Observe:
It doesn’t have to be that blatant- smaller outlines of color, blended properly with the background, can make an equally effective glow-y look 🙂
Why do artists refuse to use references why why why.
It’s not a contest to see who can get by without them. It’s not cheating to look at a thing in order to know what the thing looks like.
You don’t get stronger or better by pretending. Nobody is impressed by the awkward whatever-it-is you just drew. Use references.
I don’t think a lot of people know that it’s not cheating. I recall seeing so many piece of art called out because they referenced a pose, someone recognized it, and then proceeded to shame them for it. There’s this belief, both by creators and the audience, that artists should just be able to translate the ideas from their head to paper, and if they don’t, it’s plagiarism, or not true originality (spoiler alert: there’s no such thing).
I myself didn’t start using references until very recently, because even I was under the impression that it was frowned upon. And that belief has seriously crippled and stalled my ability to improve as an artist.
As a restarting artist, I can confirm. I just never knew. I thought you were just supposed to know how to draw the body correctly and if you didn’t you had no talent.
(( I am going to say this again, loud and clear for everyone:
USING REFERENCES FOR ART IS NOT ‘CHEATING’!!!
If you can draw/paint without references, great! But if you need to use them, and feel that your art can be bettered by using references, please, use them! This is one of the biggest tips I can give to artists, is USE REFERENCES!
Anyone who would dare to attack someone for using references after ‘recognizing a pose’ is a dipshit, who doesn’t know a thing about art.
Do you know who else used references for their art?
Norman Rockwell
Alphonse Mucha
Gustav Klimt
Toulouse Lautrec
Vincent Van Gogh
Paul Gauguin
Edgar Degas
Gil Elvgren
Frida Kahlo
Pablo Picasso
Disney Studios
And thousands of others! So, artists! Go forth, and use references!!! ))
What do you think artists do when they ask someone to stand infron of them for 6 hours and then they draw this person. Do they cheat? Or when they place a still life and then paint it, cheating again? LOL
Soooo. I made this post originally on my personal blog (I’m eliciaforever), and it was nothing more than a little rant about a specific incident that I deleted after five minutes. But before I could delete it, it took the hell off on me, and now it has all these notes. And LOTS OF AMAZING INPUT.
And I just wanted to add in response to the above tags in particular, that shaming people for using references is something that happens to so many of us SO OFTEN. It doesn’t matter how skilled you are. People think art is supposed to be magical or whatever, and anything else is a crime. The reality of course is that art is a thousand times more deliberate than a lot of people think it is.
So yeah. Good info to pass along. Use references, kids. ❤
If you’re super scared about people being like “I recognize that specific pose!” or you just can’t find what you’re looking for, it is so so so so beneficial to take your own reference pictures.
If you can get a friend to pose for you or take a picture of you posing for a reference picture, do it. I’ve done it quite a few times because I couldn’t find the pose I was looking for in any of my usual resources.
And here’s the thing. I’m not good at drawing people. I need practice, and lots of it. But I can guarantee you that without those reference photos, every single person I drew using them would have had much worse and more awkward anatomy and I would not want to even think about those pieces ever again. I would probably not have ever drawn another person again if I could have gotten away with it because I wouldn’t have seen anything good in trying.
But having a reference to help me see how I was screwing up was so beneficial and definitely helped. I still need practice but I have at least a basic grasp on anatomy because of using reference photos. So if I need to sketch something quick I can get a lot closer to accurate because I’ve had practice actually drawing people from reference photos.
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