My first modeling shoot vs my most recent. Models: we all start somewhere! Keep at it~💜
Hi! You're art is absolutely stunning and I just wanted to ask how do you make you're art seem so alive? Like with anatomy and posing and such. When I draw myself it often seems stiff and motionless so I was wondering if you had any tips?
Here you go buddy!!! I mean this is by no means a how-to, more just random tips that may be helpful to apply to your style! Also please bear in mind I massively over exaggerate butts and thighs and this may not be something you are into lmao
Hey, this post may contain adult content, so we’ve hidden it from public view.
hey!! sorry to hijack this post, but there are a bunch of ways you can make videogames without knowing shit about computers!!
for starters, there’s Twine, which is fucking great for making all kinds of interactive experiences (it’s what Crystal Warrior Ke$ha was made in so you KNOW it’s good) at all skill levels (i picked it up and made a game in two minutes a few nights ago)
if you want a bit more involved experience there’s Inform 7 which is a simple language for text-based adventure games that reads like slightly-weird English and also relatively easy to learn
you can do some pretty fucking cool stuff with Unity (my personal engine of choice) but you may need to dig a bit farther to get at the good stuff. there’s lots of really good presets though (i made an entire game just mixing and matching pre-existing templates and adding in my own art, won an award at a game jam for that one) and if you want help the community’s pretty dang friendly from what i’ve seen!
this is just a taste of what’s out there from what i’ve seen, but there’s so many cool resources out there. if anyone wants help getting started, i’m around to give you a leg up on making something in the coolest, most unexplored art medium around!
I’m addin’ to this post because lowering the barrier to entry for making games is super important to me!!!! If y’all have any questions about making games, you’re welcome to come and ask! I made this list a while back with some friends, so it has some of the programs John already mentioned.
2D Editors:
GameMaker : Potential for pure drag-and-drop “programming”. It is recommended to read-up on the program’s functions to make good use of it. Good for prototyping. Uses its own language called Game Maker Language (GML) that is similar to a C language (e.g. C++ or C#). For both Mac and PC; free version available.
Construct2 : Drag and drop level editor that uses an “If-Then” event sheet structure for programming. Good for prototyping and for beginners. For PC; free version available.
GameSalad : Drag and drop with no code requirement. Good for programming. For both Mac and PC; free version available.
Solpeo : HTML5 based game engine for 2D and isometric game development. Some programming knowledge needed. Platforms supported: Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer 9+. Free version available.
Stencyl : Drag and Drop “programming,” templates you can edit the variables/values for.
Scratch : Lego-block-style coding platform by MIT; totally free and a great intro to thinking in code. Very kid-friendly and comes with a community site. Browser version available.
3D Editors:
Unity : 3D editor that creates 3D games. Can build games for browser, as an app, or for mobile devices (iOS and Android). For both Mac and PC; free version available.
UDK (Unreal Development Kit) : Full-fledged, highly advanced editor. Features a complete set of tools that go from level design to visual scripting to cut-scene creation. Uses it’s own programming language called Unreal Script that can be arranged with Kismet, a visual code editor. For Mac and PC; free.
2D Art/Animation Software:
GIMP : Free photo editing and digital painting software.
Easy Paint Tool SAI : Free digital painting software with a UI similar to Photoshop.
Mischief : Free digital painting software with an endless canvas.
3D Art/Animation Software:
Sculptris : From the company that created Zbrush, this free software is ideal for beginning 3D sculptors.
Maya : Animation, VFX, lighting, and rendering software.
Magical Voxel : Voxel Art (3D Pixel Art). Very intuitive and quick to pick up.
SketchUp : Architectural modeling software, great for creating 3D environments and buildings. Free version available.
Text-Based Games:
Twine : Create interactive text stories using Twine’s visual map system that links your game together. Easy to learn and use. End result is browser-based. For Mac and PC; free.
Quest : Interactive text stories that you can build in-browser.
Ren’Py : Create visual novels using a modified version of Python that reads like a combination of stage directions and a CYOA novel. For PC, Mac, and Linux; free.
Audio Resources/Editors:
Indie Game Music : This site offers free indie music with no need to worry about royalties or licenses.
Audacity : A free, open-source, cross-platform sound editor that allows you to record and arrange sound.
Super Flash Bros. : This site allows you to record theremin-like (8bit) sounds and export them as .wav files for your games.
Poor neglected hips, such an awesome part of the body but so difficult to do *right*. It really just takes a few plotted landmarks and they’ll draw themselves, promise.
how to make eyes (no seriously eyes are fucking hard for me)
Late last year I wanted to start a series of short tutorials called Tip Jar, as a way of saying thanks to my fans and giving back to my patrons. This is the first of the series I have made, showing my technique on quickly filling in lineart so you can get to painting without coloring outside the lines faster.
Someday I hope to turn these into video tutorials when I have the income and the time, but for now I hope that I will be able to share useful tips in this infographic format.
Worth sharing because this is exaaaaactly how I do my flats! I get this question all the time when I post my process videos, and this explains it far more succinctly than I ever could. :)
I recently had a short discussion with someone who had a lot of weird ideas about what it’s like to be an artist pulling an income down from Patreon. Generally speaking the thought was that I was pulling down a large chunk of change for doing relatively little. The conversation showed not only a lack of understanding of the process but a lack of understanding in how this income actually measures up to the needs of daily life.
1) The amount many artists make is not typically enough to pay for a lot of things. Some of us even pull in incomes lower than minimum wage. I currently pull in HALF of what my spouse makes at her regular call center job and I work just as many hours. This puts me below minimum wage and puts our family at under the two person income that is ideal to keep a family running. We can pay for our mortgage and we can pay our bills but at any point when an unexpected expense comes up we are left scrambling. This means that if health insurance plays games with us, our car has a problem, or a family member dies we are not able to absorb the expense ourselves like supposedly responsible adults. I do not pick these examples as hypotheticals, all have happened in the last half year…. sometimes twice.
2) Art is a luxury item and by all accounts can not be banked on or anticipated with any real assurance. I’ve been doing art for money for a bit now but I have friends who’s experience dwarfs my own. From these people I am starting to learn some hard and fast (but not always for sure) rules. There are periods of the year where we will see ups and downs, with other luxury entertainment items being our direct competition. This means that the ability to absorb unexpected expenses drops year round. During the times when we’re up we have to withhold spending to save for the low times where withholding spending is no longer a choice but something that is forced upon us.
3) What you perceive as our income is actually a fair amount less. When you get paid, your taxes come out of a paycheck automatically and you consistently see the income you make, not what you would have made before those taxes. This is the formula you’re used to but it isn’t the one we live by. For us, our income is a Gross income, not a Net income. This means we still have yet to pay those taxes and are expected to do so at the time of year when everyone else is receiving refunds. Because of how these tax codes work however, we are likely to pay a higher percentage in taxes than you did originally and the government keeps all of it. No refunds.
4) There is no surefire way to get our product or service to the people who really want it. Many of us, especially those in the NSFW sector of art like myself, post online in the hope we will get people to notice. But what are the choices for doing so? DA, FA, HF, and a couple others are all ART sites where we can post but are unlikely to pull in any business because that’s basically trying to market art to artists who can always make their own art. Non Art sites permitting out free-wheeling content like Tumblr or other Blog sites allow our work to be seen by non-artists but as it turns out is more likely to be stolen or just saved and reposted than even be circulated with our own names attached to it. So in the end we have to live off of a thin sliver of the online population that is both honest and not an artist. Consider for a moment the vast majority of people you encounter online and tell me how many people you think that is.
5) There is an active chunk of the web who believes we shouldn’t be compensated at all for our work, that we should provide the content for free and be happy with the pat on the head that likes or favorites function as. These people will even go so far as to undermine the methods with which we CAN make money specifically to further their idea that we should hang up the “Paywall” and just start spitting out content for free and be happy with whatever tips that might come our way. This would be like providing someone a whole meal with the expectation that they might pay you but ONLY if they loved how it tasted. Some of the individuals of this group are themselves artists looking to tear down other artists business models in order to corral people in to a less than honest one they’ve managed to cook up. Which brings me to…
6) We’re all in competition with each other as well. Many of us are friends and would even like to socialize more, but out of a need to survive remain guarded or separated from our peers. Those of us who went to school for art are worse about it than those who didn’t, because we’re taught from day one that all the people sharing the classroom with us are our competition. It’s not really a correct way of thinking and at every opportunity I try to actively work against it…. helping people out without expectation of compensation. And every so often you’ll get a pretty swell group of people who hear you’re having a hard time with life and band together to lend you a hand. But these are exceptions to rules you see in our community, I regard those people AS exceptional.
7) This one is more me than maybe some other people….but I am for the most part functioning within a vacuum. I produce work with the only indication that it’s any good being a couple of numbers on each site. Likes, Views, Favorites, Reblogs…. the number of these metrics gives a little insight as to how well something does but absolutely no indication as to why! Or even why it didn’t do better. I can crank out piece after piece and get little to no commentary on it from anyone. For an artist who is trying to fine tune a process or product this can be maddening, as we continuously feel that the already mercurial process becomes even more so without feedback. We have just as much luck casting runes in to a bowl to find out what we should do than asking for feedback.
We go through a lot of stuff you guys don’t see. We struggle with our decisions to GO with what we’re doing and often we’re at odds with the people in our lives for the choices we’ve made to try and dedicate our lives to creating something. This goes double for artists working on Smut because we’ve chosen an even harder section of the spectrum to distinguish ourselves in. Some of us can’t talk about the work we do in the regular world and some of us believe sexuality is a valid subject of art even if we’re told it’s inappropriate. It’s tough, and we fight for the ability to keep on going.
I write this because it’s hard for me, having a family and struggling as we are, to hear that I either make too much or that I’m living the easy life when last month was the LOWEST amount of money I have ever made in Art since I started. And this comes at a time when I feel like I’m really hitting some milestone improvements fairly regularly.
So this is just to inform you, who may not be artists, of how we live and how the process works. We barely get by and it’s difficult….ultimately we continue on for the love of what we do. We don’t want to be made to HATE what we do by being told these things or treated as though we’re running some con on you guys. We’re not. Most of us don’t even want to make a LOT, we simply want to make enough to have the stuff in our life paid for and taken care of so we can have MORE time to do the thing we love…. which is this. How many other people will you know in your life who only want to make enough money to be left alone in order to KEEP doing the exact same work for you? I’m hard pressed to think of something else like that.
So there it is, do with that info what you will and if you’ve got to this point thanks for reading this WHOLE thing.
