Admin Post: Community Check-In for October 2020

[goss]

Today's the last day of October, and we'd love to have you check in and chat with us. How have things been with you this past month?

Did you sign up for or take part in any fandom activities in October, or have you been working on any personal art projects? Are you currently trying to meet a deadline? Feel free to share upcoming challenges that have got you excited, any frustrations you've been experiencing, possible goals for the next month, and so on.

It's the final day of Drawtober! \o/ Happy 31st October, and Happy Halloween to those who celebrate! :D

Comments

[yhlee]

I participated in trickortreatex with some fanart but reveals of creators won't be until Nov. 7.

I'm currently working on a tricky piece in Clip Studio EX - I finally caved and subscribed to it for my iPad because drawing on it with the Pencil is SO much better than my inability to use a Wacom tablet properly with the desktop version of the app. It's amazing how much easier it is to draw a chessboard (with reference I shot myself) using the perspective ruler!

Happy Halloween/31st October to everyone!

[mific]

I am so bad at practicing with new graphics apps, plus I was too cheap to get the Apple pencil so got a knock-off, which predictably has now stopped working, :/ How does Clip Studio X differ from, like, Procreate?

[yhlee]

The biggest difference from my standpoint is that it has menus. This makes for a cluttery interface, because it's directly ported over from the desktop version of the app. But that makes it easier for me to learn, because I started out with the desktop version and moreover it's much easier to find something in a menu than to try to memorize hopeless endless variations of gesture commands.

Otherwise, Clip Studio has specific tools for drawing comics (it was written for doing manga), like panels and speech bubbles and whatnot, while Procreate's mainly for painting. I suspect Procreate of having a better brush engine for natural media simulation (I haven't had a chance to look at whatever new brushes there are in Clip Studio, it's been a few years). Both of them support animation, but Procreate's workflow is kind of nontraditional whereas Clip Studio's is closer to what you would get from a more traditional animation app with timelines and keyframes and camera moves and whatever. You can do animation in Procreate, but I don't think it supports camera moves at all, and Clip Studio lets you import sound files (e.g. for animating speech) while I'm pretty sure Procreate doesn't support that at this juncture.

The big disadvantage of Clip Studio is that it's a monthly subscription (or you can pay it yearly), and Procreate is a one-time purchase. So Clip Studio is very definitely much more expensive. I'm resigned to software all going subscription at this point. :/ But I can afford it, and the tools are easier for me to use for certain projects, so.

more than you probably wanted to know about CSP vs procreate but hey.

[syntheid]

tl;dr is that Clip Studio Paint is a very mature desktop app developed specifically for illustrators, comic artists, and animators in mind to replace Photoshop as their primary drawing tool but it is absolutely not well optimized for the ipad and the subscription fee is a bummer. It does however, have the full feature set of the desktop app.

CSP will allow things like much larger file sizes which can be important for print quality. It doesn't really limit you, but it WILL lag like heck if you make a really big file, whereas Procreate will limit your layers based on your resolution/pixel size and the capacity of your ipad. But that keeps Procreate snappier to use. I've mostly switched to Procreate on the ipad for quick sketches and web-only pieces, but if I wanted to do a big complex piece or something for print I'd probably at least at some point take it back into CSP to finish it.

The brush engine in CSP is imo better at natural media simulation-- Procreate brushes tend to look like... Procreate brushes, at least to me, even with the significant progress they've made in version 5, because of the way they taper and overlay, that blending is a separate tool and the brushes themselves don't really have options to blend on strokes or pick up color, the textures are a bit more limited in some fashions and don't tend to make truly organic shapes without manual tweaking during the painting process, and the strokes will kind of ... I don't know, pivot? The way they smooth them is very digital. CSP's brushes have a lot of complicated settings but allow for some really interesting organic shapes to brushes by overlaying different textures and brush shapes and applying jitters etc.

Other major stuff: Liquify still doesn't exist in CSP though there is a mesh transform tool and also doesn't have the one-click access to things like paint-selection layer effects. Procreate doesn't have CSP's auto colorize, 3D models, vast array of perspective tools, or vector lineart layers (these are cool if you use lineart a lot-- you can draw with raster brushes and have them behave like vectors).

[mekare]

Looking forward to reveals then!

[olivermoss]

I got one more thing done within October, ghost dicks.

Everything I got done within October is on this tag. The dicks are under an LJ cut so clicking the tag wont show them.

I have a lot more I wanted to get done and will keep chipping away at them. Hopefully I'll get into a good rhythm of slowly getting stuff done.

[mific]

The ghost dicks are a hoot!

[mekare]

I agree with mific.

[syntheid]

Haven't been able to do much arting-wise, so all I got is this orc, which wasn't even part of a prompt so I didn't post it here hah. Exhaustion's been kicking my butt lately, and I'm a little overloaded.

I don't think it's going to let up soon, but since part of what's keeping me busy is running some games, I'll probably be doing a bit of game maps and maybe some of them will actually be more than a ten minute sketch? I think at this point I'm just trying to get through this year and fingers crossed the next year will chill a bit.

[mific]

I really like the orc, great tusks!

[mekare]

I think at this point I'm just trying to get through this year and fingers crossed the next year will chill a bit.

This.

Also that is a cool orc dude.

[mific]

It's been a busy month with the Drawtober challenge, and that's mostly what I've been doing. This is the first year that I haven't had so much RL work to manage as well, so I had time for it, although it's meant postponing finishing a fic for a mid-November Big Bang deadline, which I now have to get cracking on pdq. It's been great seeing everyone's art for Drawtober, and I'm almost there, with just one to go (for crow). It's a slightly complicated drawing and will take me another day to finish. I managed all the prompts, with several of the pics covering two prompts. I'll do a round-up in my journal soon.
And I just posted Pumpkin Ride which is my usual cracky digital art McShep piece for Halloween. :D

[mekare]

You were so PRODUCTIVE it's insane! I still need to check out a lot of your posts, but the ones I saw really brightened my days - esp. because you also used colours.

[mekare]

I started this month more productively than I thought - even while travelling - and then just took a big break and only did two more prompts. I still need to finish #25.
That means I did 12 pieces this year (on my drawtober tag) which is exactly the same amount as 2017 when I first did the challenge. Overall I am pleased I managed to participate given the constraints I'm working in.

I've also been busy working on other challenges which might not have been the best idea in retrospect. Like mific I'm doing the Due South BB, plus POI BB and Nirvana in Fire Exchange. POI BB is going to be posted in 8th Nov.