The Gang of Five

The Land Before Time => LBT Fanart => Topic started by: The Great Valley Guardian on December 15, 2007, 06:15:01 PM

Title: Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials
Post by: The Great Valley Guardian on December 15, 2007, 06:15:01 PM
Well after seeing several replies in a recent topic, another member suggested that a new topic be started for the artists here on the GOF...and that idea is sheer brilliance...so partial credit (Okay full credit) goes to Kor for the idea behind this! You ROCK! ;)

So if you have any tips, tricks, or tutorials...(And can provide a link to a free download...I'm sure we would thank you for years to come! :DD ) let your voice be heard!
Title: Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials
Post by: action9000 on December 15, 2007, 06:48:09 PM
Hmm, well I sure have no problem with this.   :yes I'm just considering where to put it...we have a Visual Art forum in "The Arts".  General art tutorials could go there.

If somebody is offering tutorials on how to draw an LBT character or something though, it would be more suitable here, perhaps.  I'll sticky this here for now.  Feel free to add in your thoughts on this.  The staff will post up a decision in the near future. B)
Title: Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials
Post by: Kor on December 15, 2007, 07:25:24 PM
This way all the artists and aspiring artists have one place to go to to help each other, share tips, ect.   I wonder if those making the music videos have the same sort of thing.
Title: Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials
Post by: landbeforetimelover on December 15, 2007, 07:28:26 PM
Making music videos isn't exactly an "art".  You just do it.  Find songs, cut clips, and string them together.  I think the only "help" section we can make is already available(the song ideas thread).
Title: Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials
Post by: DarkHououmon on December 15, 2007, 07:32:33 PM
Quote from: landbeforetimelover,Dec 15 2007 on  07:28 PM
Making music videos isn't exactly an "art".  You just do it.  Find songs, cut clips, and string them together.  I think the only "help" section we can make is already available(the song ideas thread).
I consider it art.  And there's more help you can get for making music videos than just song suggestions. Song suggestiosn are just one thing. There's more to making a music video than just having a song.
Title: Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials
Post by: Kor on December 15, 2007, 08:01:17 PM
Maybe a thread can be made if the music video makers see a need.  They can help each other that way.  They are the best ones to know if they need such a thing or not.
Title: Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials
Post by: DarkHououmon on December 15, 2007, 08:04:04 PM
Yeah I agree. That sounds like a good idea.
Title: Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials
Post by: action9000 on December 15, 2007, 08:25:04 PM
Quote
Maybe a thread can be made if the music video makers see a need. They can help each other that way. They are the best ones to know if they need such a thing or not.
MV artists, among all other artists are welcome to discuss this very topic in this thread.  If anyone sees a need, feel free to express your thoughts here.  Based on the results of this topic and the progression of the art/music video topics in the near future, we will make changes accordingly.  If there appears to be no need, nothing will change.
Title: Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials
Post by: DarkHououmon on December 27, 2007, 12:17:38 PM
I'm considering posting tips on making music videos based on my experiences. Is anyone interested?
Title: Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials
Post by: Kor on December 27, 2007, 05:05:43 PM
Maybe you and some other experienced folks can post tips together in the same thread.  Not sure if you meant that.
Title: Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials
Post by: Sky on January 03, 2008, 11:14:26 AM
This topic is a good idea. :lol:
I thought something of doing a "How to draw..." tutorial for each characters a have done.
Some people asked me on how I draw them. Then I came up with this idea. But i need a little practice on explaing things so no one gets confused.  :blink:
Title: Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials
Post by: Kor on January 03, 2008, 12:59:57 PM
Sounds like a good idea.  Maybe you can start by trying to describe to yourself, that may help you to work out any kinks that you may want to work out.
Title: Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials
Post by: The Great Valley Guardian on January 03, 2008, 01:16:19 PM
Actually I always thought the characters were just a bunch of ovals, circles, and lines....that''s how I draw Longtail anyway...oh well just thought I'd comment further on what Kor said.  :^.^:
Title: Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials
Post by: NeptuneNavigator2001 on April 26, 2008, 09:25:45 PM
Certainly some tutorials, perhaps from a few different sources, would definitely help!  I'm not so good at drawing, although I've thought of chalking up the courage to "doodle" on some paper.  I'm more of a poet.  But I for one, would certainly benefit from something like that...!  I know it takes practice, patience and time, though.  Hmm; I have a few ideas, but what good are those ideas, if I can't draw much?  (Then again, it's not like I've spent years and years trying to draw, unlike poetry.)  A picture truly IS worth a thousand words...!  It would be brilliant if some tutorials were put out on this subject.  Books for drawing The Simpsons exist, and other cartoon characters as well, so why not some tutorials on drawing the Land Before Time characters?  That would rock!

EDIT: Oh, and if this was considered a "bump," I'm sorry.  But I could hardly resist, and only stopped to look at the last date after I posted...  Bleh; sorry.

EDIT 2: Alright, Sky's already posted one on how to draw Littlefoot!  I'd be content with just those...  Go Sky!  Tutorials for all seven characters would rock!
Title: Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials
Post by: Sky on May 02, 2008, 02:55:25 AM
I have some tips to help people improve or motivate to draw:
Maybe there will be more artists around here. ;)

----------------------------------------
If you don't have any expierience drawing, I suggest you start drawing from a picture.
What I'm trying to say is, copy the picture. For example, draw Littlefoot in a simple stance about 3 - 5 times.
If you do that, you will have an idea how he looks like and how his body is build.
Draw a character very often, then you will be able to draw them from memory without a problem.

Use lines, circles, squares, ... as a help. You know, the ones which artists do before they go on details.
You might be having a hard time drawing a stance. So use them to help you where the body parts should go.

Drawing pictures takes time, so don't rush your work to finish it earlier.
Trust me, the picture will look uglier. So take your time and chill.

Watch cartoons. No, seriously. It's a good inspiration source if you are running out of ideas.
And they also help you drawing the anatomy correctly by watching the people and animals carefully.
But make sure it is a serious drawn cartoon. Not "too cartoony", like the head is bigger than the body. Except you want to go with that style.

Same thing with comics. Read them. You can also use them as a reference for a stance or for drawing hands. Very helpful.

If you are currently drawing a picture, but not enjoying drawing it, then stop.
Don't draw something you don't like (like me, I don't like drawing humans). It's no use if you're drawing something you don't enjoy. It would be only a waste of time. But you may be forced to do it, though.

MOST IMPORTANT TIP:
Drawing should be fun. If you don't have fun, then you should try something different.
----------------------------------------

The explanations might be a bit hard to understand.  -_-
But I hope they were helpful.

Might open a new thread as I might come up with more tips.

[size0]( "Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide" rulez =D )
Title: Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials
Post by: NeptuneNavigator2001 on May 03, 2008, 12:40:11 AM
Those are great tips, Sky!  But also, I noticed you did a tutorial on DeviantArt about how to draw Littlefoot - thank you so much!  I do hope that you do the same thing for the other characters too, even Ruby!  Yes I do, yep yep yep! :lol:
Title: Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials
Post by: Sky on May 03, 2008, 02:47:49 AM
Yeah, I hope I will get to do them as well. =)
Title: Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials
Post by: Chiletrek on May 03, 2008, 03:12:21 AM
Hello:
 Thanks for the tips Sky :) , they are indeed useful since they speak the truth, not only in art but they can be adapted into many other things too :DD .
Title: Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials
Post by: Vaan360 on September 08, 2008, 01:28:08 PM
Great tips indeed, I¥m gonna try and draw littlefoot.
Title: Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials
Post by: metadude1234 on April 11, 2009, 03:18:06 AM
drawing humans is indeed annoying because its hard to get the right expression and---(jabbering on and on about pointless things) well you get the idea......
that's why i only draw animals or people in costumes or armour (clone troopers, helghast, stormtroopers and so on....)
Title: Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials
Post by: Caustizer on September 21, 2009, 09:52:52 PM
I've been doing some drawings for my RP idea, LBT: Future Wars but of course they didn't turn out as well as I would have hoped.  My key weakness is the details, I can't picture the small things in my head too good.

Those are some nice tips Sky left for aspiring artists, I hope he leaves more!

Title: Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials
Post by: The Great Valley Guardian on November 24, 2009, 09:55:58 PM
I happened upon a shading Tutorial by accident last night. Heres the link.
http://djcoulzanimalsonly.deviantart.com/a...orial-131073456 (http://djcoulzanimalsonly.deviantart.com/art/Shading-Tutorial-131073456)
Title: Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials
Post by: Allicloud on February 25, 2011, 11:48:40 AM
Well, I've recently been doing alot of drawings, and I've got a few tips:

1. For starting-  The best place to start would be taking screenshots of character's faces and trying to copy them. NOT tracing them, though. You'll only learn properly by copying the expressions.

2. One trick I've learnt is to take the screenshot, and try to convert the entire head or body down into geometric shapes, often drawing the shapes directly onto the screenshot. For example, on its simplest level, Littlefoot's head is a sphere, with a tempered cube for the snout/mouth and a cylinder for the neck. Spheres are the best things to work from, since they can be stretched and distorted and create more natural shapes.

3. For specific poses, always start with the "spine-line", a single curved line that goes along the imagined character's spine, from the head, down the neck and back, to the tip of the tail, with the geometric shapes drawn over it to form the basic shape.

4. if the character is a quadroped, the body can usually be one shape (Like longnecks, spiketails and threehorns, who have a single oval for the body in my drawings). If it's a biped, use 1 shape for the hips, and another shape for the shoulders and chest, then link them up with the body's outline (For example, Sierra or Pterano has a small circle for the hip area, and a slightly larger and flatter circle for the shoulders and chest, while Rinkus, being tubbier, would have the opposite)

5. Eyes- These are a very important aspect of expression, especially with cartoon characters. So what I do is when I do a sheet for a character (Generally with 1 or 2 full pictures, several expressions and other stuff), I'll have a specific part for different eyes; happy, sad, angry, scheming, etc etc. No face, no head, just eyes.

6. Gender differences- Not necessarily true for all the characters, but in some cases, I've noticed subtle design differences between male and female characters. There are the obvious ones, such as the females usually having blue eyes and/or long eyelashes, but there are others. For example, females generally have a slightly slimmer build than males, as well as less sharp angles, and several (Tria is a good example) have slimmer legs, often with the shin becoming an inverted trapezium, with the wide base connecting at the knee, and the top connecting at the ankle.

Hope all this helps!
Title: Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials
Post by: Sky on February 25, 2011, 06:33:48 PM
@Caustizer
I thought to continue with the tutorials on how to draw the gang. :) Unfortunately, it takes a lot of time to create and with my current school state, I'll probably need a few months until I can work on them further.

@Allicloud
Those are some really helpful tips. :) Thanks for sharing.  :DD
Title: Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials
Post by: DarkHououmon on February 25, 2011, 06:50:08 PM
Quote from: Allicloud,Feb 25 2011 on  10:48 AM
3. For specific poses, always start with the "spine-line", a single curved line that goes along the imagined character's spine, from the head, down the neck and back, to the tip of the tail, with the geometric shapes drawn over it to form the basic shape.
I personally don't follow this tip. I tried this method once and found it makes things more difficult for me. With a line drawn, I have to think harder on where the shapes would be. I find that this method is easier for me to do: draw shapes for head, draw line for neck, draw shape for body, and draw line for tail.
Title: Re: Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials
Post by: zero-point on July 02, 2018, 02:45:56 AM
Well, looks like this topic has been abandoned for more than 7 years. That's a long time. I would not mind if we could somehow resurrect it! :DD
Title: Re: Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials
Post by: Flathead770 on July 04, 2018, 11:58:19 PM
Hmm that's not a bad idea. I've considered giving my thoughts on tips that help me but I just have to some how put my thoughts down into coherent sentences :p
Title: Re: Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials
Post by: Flathead770 on May 08, 2021, 03:39:09 PM
Well after almost 3 years I'm finally gonna do what I said I was thinking about doing  :PLoofah Should thank @caspyartist for finally motivating me enough to go through with it haha.

Since Ducky was brought up I'm gonna start with her, plus she's typically one of the more challenging ones to draw anyways. So for this sketch I decided on wanting Ducky to be kinda scared while slightly turning around, so I'll try and show the steps of how I go about doing it. Bipedal characters like Ducky and Chomper I generally always start the same way, with 2 circles overlapping each other.

(https://i.postimg.cc/qRzbk4D5/1.jpg)

The top one is the chest and the bottom one is the stomach. The line going down both of them is how I want the center of her body to be facing, with them contouring around to show that it's a round shape. This helps with the placement of the feet and arms, which will be sketched next.

(https://i.postimg.cc/KYKBjjFB/2.jpg)

The legs and arms are roughly placed on either sides of the center line. I kinda rushed ahead here, but the limbs can be drawn by placing different sized ovals. I've just basically haven't drawn the overlapping parts where the joints are. Also added some lines where the neck is going to go and an oval for the head, with the lines going around it in two coordinate directions to show where it's pointing and if it's tilted. Basically the intersection of these two lines shows what direction the nose points. As for the tail, I basically just extended the bottom circle outwards in a sorta wavy, triangular shape. After this, I sketch over the lines I want to keep and press harder to create darker lines.

(https://i.postimg.cc/GhQkS6q8/3.jpg)

I also add a bit more detail in as well, such as the line separating the belly from the light green colour, as well as her feet, the marks for her knees, and her shoulders. Next, I clean up the body by erasing all the lighter lines as well as try to draw her hands haha. Still not an expert on drawing hands so I can't really give much tips there. I just try and do what I can  :sducky

(https://i.postimg.cc/Bn72JHWJ/4.jpg)

And with that the body is basically done! Now the hard part (especially for Ducky), drawing the face. With the oval split into 4 quadrants, I usually start with placing the the eye down near the back of the quadrant that is most visible as it generally can be drawn with a flat almost side perspective of most characters. Basically just half an oval with the bottom part concave inwards to show where the cheeks are, with the eyebrow part mirroring the eye and extended upwards. Once that is down, I start drawing her nose, with the top of it peaking right on the vertical line. I mostly just wing it but it starts around where the eyebrow stops and goes down slightly below her one eye drawn. Probably not a hard fast rule for her but it did end up that way in this drawing. Once the nose is in place, the cheek on the side closest to the viewer can be extended downwards from the eye, and the top of her mouth can be sketched out in front of her nose. Afterwards, I drew a curved oval for her crest behind her eye, and another small half oval near the bottom and behind her eye for the ear. Draw a line in the middle of the ear and have it curve around in a circular shape below the cheek drawing to get the bottom part of the face setup. Now, around the same height of the other eye (since the head is level in this case), draw a partially concealed oval on the other side of the nose for the eye on the far side, along with the eyebrow above. I also included a small circle underneath the far eye to give a little part of her far cheek to show to give the face a bit more depth to it. Once done you would get something like drawn below.

(https://i.postimg.cc/gkdVsGqb/5.jpg)

Whew, that was a lot of explaining. Now to work on the expression, which can be modified mainly by two things, the eyes and the mouth. Since I want her to be scared, I start by giving her sad eyes, which can be thought of the opposite angle of mad eyes. That means the back of the eyes are cut off lower then the front part of the eye and angled upwards (make sure to mirror the opposite eye so they're both consistent with each other!). Next is the mouth. For this part I decided on having it open, with the major difference in expression being at the connection between the upper and lower jaw: in general happy emotions curl upwards, negative emotions curl downwards (but maybe not always the case). I already have the upper jaw drawn, which are the 3 circle shapes that are passed her nose, so all that's left to do is to draw the part towards the cheek curl downwards, and to make an oval shape out and around to complete the lower jaw. NOTE: Make sure that the lower jaw is always smaller than the upper jaw, otherwise it will look really weird (unless the character has that trait of course, but Ducky, and most characters, do not).  Draw another larger and concentric oval to the lower part of the mouth and extend it to the lower part of the cheek to complete the lower jaw and face! Oh! Also maybe include a line to show the tongue as well. She's not screaming so it doesn't need to be extended out or anything. Now the face should be looking more complete.

(https://i.postimg.cc/bY101ZnR/6.jpg)

All that's really left is to add in some more detail such as the pupils and eye lashes. Since she is turning around, I want the eye to be in the far right corner. The pupil is also slightly smaller than usual to help show she is more scared. Draw a concentric oval for the iris, and another, smaller circle in the pupil for the eye reflection and that eye is done. Add the same to the farther eye, only smaller. A note here to be careful how the eye reflections are placed in both eyes. It can easily make the character look crossed eyed and goofy and is something you might need to play around with to get right. Eyelashes are easy as they're just 3 curved lines at the top of the eyes. This is also a good time to trace over the final lines you want to keep on the face.

(https://i.postimg.cc/t44h0DMr/7.jpg)

With that the drawing is pretty much finished! From here I just did a bit of cleaning up by erasing any rough lines that I don't want to keep, along with shading in the pupil. Here's the final result.

(https://i.postimg.cc/1X1pLQk6/8.jpg)

Overall it turned out pretty good for a quick sketch of a random pose. Hopefully on a high level this helps anyone that might want to try tackling drawing Ducky. She's a hard one to get looking right. Let me know if I didn't cover enough detail or went too fast with the steps in between each image. I wasn't sure how many pictures I should take, but it could've easily been 20+ of them with all of the smaller steps.

Conversely, let me know how you draw Ducky if you do things differently. Maybe we can get a conversation going on this with sharing tips!  :Dducky
Title: Re: Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials
Post by: Sneak on May 08, 2021, 07:18:03 PM
That's great, Flathead! :O

Wouldn't mind to see how to draw other characters as well. :)
Title: Re: Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials
Post by: caspyartist on May 13, 2021, 07:14:12 AM
haha no worries and thanks so much for doing this @Flathead770! hopefully now this thread will see more action :duckyhappy this'll really help out. if you want, I'll tag ya whenever I do draw Ducky (which hopefully be soon).
Title: Re: Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials
Post by: Flathead770 on May 13, 2021, 05:50:20 PM
Yeah feel free to tag me whenever you have it finished! Otherwise I usually stay on top of anything posted in the fanart section so I'll catch it either way. Good luck! :)littlefoot
Title: Re: Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials
Post by: The jewelstone queen on August 20, 2021, 07:10:26 AM
drawing humans is indeed annoying because its hard to get the right expression and---(jabbering on and on about pointless things) well you get the idea......
that's why i only draw animals or people in costumes or armour (clone troopers, helghast, stormtroopers and so on....)

I strongly agree with you on that one, humans are very hard for me to draw, it's usually the proportions that get me off which is why I stick to animals instead. I have a couple of human characters, but I don't really draw them as much. I just do theirs heads.  :yum