Suuper's non-manga art

[Suuper-san]

96/1000 copied manga pages
quality is super low, just the main layout and poses really. spending about 1 minute on each one. it's complex enough that it's a good warmup, so I do this first every day, 1 row.
last 3 rows is the quality I'm aiming for, previously I wasn't really sure what I was doing.
I'll be using these as WIPs, to inspire random pages for practice. it's super messy but it's a shred of a concept, so it'll free up that little extra brain power to create the page idea fully.
took 2 hours, although that's including the scrappy quick copies in the middle.



I wonder whats the best grid to get 100 without it being square or too narrow. I like my pages to be sort of rectangularish A4ish. Not sure why, maybe just because that's what I'm used to with drawing on paper. Might switch to working with whatever size is good for my work, now that I mention it :P

[legomaestro]

Yeah... Definitely stealing this suuper. Too awesome. Infinite canvas really will solve a lot of my problems. This way I could preload manga pages and do my tracing regimen too.

How big is the gimp file by the way?

Also for a moment I forgot about the opportunity of using previous regimens to fuel future ones. I've been running on fumes  the past few days and I only got by on the skin of my teeth. I'll need to reduce my load and just try iterative regimens rather than always thinking up new things.

[Suuper-san]

The gimp file itself is about 10MB for manga pages, but I goes up to about 50MB when I use more layers.
But the total image size is 6108x5520 (for specifically manga pages copies), about 0.5GB in RAM usage. With my open canvas method, I regularly go over 2GB image sizes in RAM because of huge canvasses. The largest image I have made is about 8000x8000. anything larger than that and my programs cant handle it haha. for the most part you can work at a lower resolution than you think. until the final stage of inking/resolving. So the manga pages I'm working on are about 300x200 for copying or 600x400 for sketching.

Yep preloading is the name of the game. It's much faster to do 4 times as much in a single shot than to so it separately 4 times, so loading up stuff in advance saves a huge amount of effort.

I'm tempted to share my image joining program but it's not really user friendly and it's also hacky, but it would be super useful :/
Let me know if you fancy giving it a crack. I accept no responsibility for your PC exploding.

Iterative regimes is my new focus where i can. Because sketching an idea is different to resolving and fixing it, which is different to inking it. So you can practice the secondary stages with your previous ideas and you practice sharpening up the images as well. win-win.

[Suuper-san]

116/1000 Body studies. I wont be posting all of these until the end but this turned out pretty well so thought I'd show it.
This page of 56 took over 4 hours. Mad. But it's part of my daily routine so it gets done, slowly but surely. 1 row a day, every day.

I'm copying with quite a high contrast, because otherwise I can't see what I'm doing properly.

Also the quality has jumped up with the level of detail, so it takes 5 minutes for each one now. So the total project time is about 70 hours. I'm hoping that I can speed up somehow.



It's quite hard to recognize areas of a distinct shade because there are gradients galore in real life. and it's not nice linear gradients, it's crazy multi-directional value changing gradients. So it's half finding an area of lightness and then working out how it fades into the other areas. The method you use to shade affects the method you use to analyse the values of the piece you are copying. And the more you look, the smaller areas of distinct light and dark you notice and it's just mad.

I should really try and do some shading from memory. Nothing's feeling like it's sticking so far. Probably colouring some lineart WIPs would work nicely.

The open canvas method is great for the projects which take up a lot of time, because you wouldn't just say "I'm gonna reserve 4 hours in my life for this study page", but doing a little every day adds up. Doing a smaller set of course is possible, but then it's a lot of saving images which takes time, compared to saving 1 in 10 times for example.

[Suuper-san]

Please can someone do a big favor for me and check if this program works on their PC
It's my first preliminary super super alpha art program.
Just open it and click "connect and enable".
You should be able to draw a green line that varies in size with pressure, and a red line when you are just moving the pen over the top.

Here's what it looks like


Basically I'd like to know if the pressure sensitivity works for you.
I'm making this program for myself primarily but I'd like to know if it works for others all the same :)
If you get any errors then please let me know :)

Here's the link to a zip with the .exe in it
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1UJcYDt6K0JJxsWbes9Cv_kVpwx-V4mi0

many thanks :)

...and so....I finally started making my own art program. RIP my free time :P
I suspect this will end up as a super-paint rather than a super-GIMP haha.
And now I'm at risk of doing animation and making an animation program. The only issue I had was getting my program to work with pen pressure and now I've got it working for me, so now it's like, what do I actually want as a program.
If this works, it'll work amazingly, or it'll crash and burn. I can't imagine a middle ground haha

[legomaestro]

Hm I installed it and it seems to autodraw for some reason. I also couldn't save?

Awesome that you're making your own art program though

[Suuper-san]

Thanks for testing!

That version doesn't save, it's just a tablet test, let me upload the latest version that I used the other day, and let me know if you have better luck!!

Heres' the link:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1-8yZkXicfeVCl2ll5iv5JVUb5QqG3wZC

Note that it ONLY works with a tablet, not with the mouse. I will add mouse functionality at some point.

Here's what it looks like now, it auto connects to your tablet on startup

Your line will not appear until you lift the pen, when drawing. That's also something I haven't coded properly yet.

[legomaestro]

Heck yes.

Dude I have no idea how you program something like this haha. Props man!

Here's what I came up with

[Suuper-san]

YESSSSSSS it WORKSSSSSSSS!!!!!!
Thanks so much for trying it out and great art!, I'm amazed that even in it's infant stages my program can be used to make art, and you did that without erase or undo!!!

Programming is a skill that's taken over 10 years to learn. Basically you start simple and work up. Just like art. The more you learn the less scary bigger things become XD

[Suuper-san]

started a new project - high level manga copies
well, semi-high level for now. spending about 15 minutes on just a single panel of random manga.

this one is from Yotsuba&!



makes me slightly angry that it takes that long to actually copy it. my ideal speed seems like an unreachable goal. But I push forwards undeterred.

hopefully this will plug a gap in my knowledge, that of the actual panel composition, details and backgrounds, as well as line quality.

having my projects in a really manageable format makes it easy to just add another one into the fray, but there is always the risk I will go too high. I'm already at 97 continuous ongoing projects haha.

the moment I drop everything study and practice related to finally produce what I want will be a day to remember.

also "art styles" are giving me a bit of a headache. I'm too much of an overthinker and I'm breaking it down too far. meh. I'll get there in the end.

You know they say when you hit a mountain, either dig through it or go around it? I feel that in my case I'm like "hey I've hit a mountain, better practice digging through mountains before I tackle this one"

[legomaestro]

Dude that looks awesome! Love how 3d it looks with just clean linework.

Haha welcome to my existence. There's so much I'd like to get started with, but every stage that I want to tackle it seems to have prerequisites for something else I definitely need to practice and study. It's some sort of hellish Zenos Paradox where to get to one point you first need to reach a fraction of that point and that fraction of a point demands yet another goal and you end up feeling like you're not moving at all.

Hahaha damn 97 projects. That's a heck of a lot dude.
 
Well art styles bug me a lot too. I still don't know what kind of head and eye combo I want to settle for. I know in my heart I would like to draw like Bleach, but there's a bunch of other inspirations I would like to draw like too haha.

Keep at it suuper. Would love to see more panels.

[Suuper-san]

thanks!

I've got at least 20 different styles (rough guess) that I'd like to draw in. it's nuts. and I keep coming up with fractions of new ideas, like an eye style or a hair rendering style. And it's like, which of my major styles do i attach this idea to?
and even linework can be broken down - do the lines vary in width or are they all constant? do they taper at the end? how often does the line break and start again (vs being one continuous line). Do the lines vary in colour or transparency? once you start looking at other artists styles with a super critical eye you notice all sorts of differences that are just a pain to evaluate XD you really start to understand why everyone's art is so different.

I envision it as a giant tech-tree where you have to unlock all the different skills and abilities with all the dependencies on different stuff before you can move on. like manga would be dependent on backgrounds, which are dependent on props and perspective. Partly the reason I have so many projects now is that I'm trying to crack some of the level-0 dependencies that have never been touched. Like I have a project just for skeletons/muscle, and one for animals, one for emotions copied from manga, one for faces copied from manga, one for faces copied from photos, etc, etc.

Basically all those references that one saves up habitually but never uses - I'm cracking down on using them, finally.
My favorite page is a super mixed bag of tutorial images that I have saved up from everywhere, so I just randomly pick a tutorial and go through it. It could be an animal, a how to draw hands, a colouring tutorial. Super mixed and very fun.

When I finish my whole page of panels I'll post it. I don't like to post partial work because 1) I do loads so it would be spamming the forum, and 2) it's a big use of time to post stuff, so I like to post in bulk as well haha.

[Suuper-san]

woke up at midnight to add a single line of code which fixed my latest programming project.
I've been playing for no reason with image editing on a pixel level, and just finished writing my own "dithering" algorithm.
This basically reduces the number of colours used (i.e. palette) but tries to preserve gradients through pointilism basically. Without this step you would get visible bands of different colours in gradients and so on, and details can get lost more easily.

I read this article a long time ago and always wanted to write my own code to do this since forever.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dither#Digital_photography_and_image_processing
For those incredibly interested, I specifically used a simplified version of this algorithm here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floyd%E2%80%93Steinberg_dithering

Here's an example of before and after.



The processed image below uses only 27 colours maximum to create the effect of every colour in the photo. Large photos actually dont even look changed when viewing at less than 100% zoom, which is a testament to how well it works.


You can see how it deals with solid colours like the purple background and the skin/blush areas with just 2 colours, but changing the spacing of them to control which colour looks dominant/the resulting colour.

normal


zoomed, click to enlarge more


I really like this robin head render



For some reason it's really addictive to see how the images change and how different bands of dot colours can combine to give a completely different colour, especially when I get interesting patterns of pixels or artefacts (sometimes from a not so perfect algorithm!)
I can't think of too many uses although I want to try and see if I can't make some real life plastic "pixel art" basically 1cm dots or something that combine to show an image when viewed from far away, using a limited colour choice of the acrylic colours that I have available at work.

[legomaestro]

Man I definitely like that effect. It's a 'simplistic' effect that adds so much depth to the image. Definitely got reminded of the good old days playing Higurashi and stuff.
Question: Did you wake up late because of inspiration or because you were sleepless haha. I'm hoping it's the former because that's a skill I want to have after having a lucid dream.

(Also how does one use this code. I have one or two photos I'd like to filter through it hehe)

[Suuper-san]

Regrettably I was just sleepless and was letting my thoughts roam about :P

I discovered another cool effect my program can do with low resolution images, making a speckled icon effect, and also a black or white only image. Doing this by hand would be a real pain haha

Black and White only (binary)


Black, White, and RGB only.


Hopefully it's clear who the actor is even though it's very pixelated.

I did one with my own face, and I'm making it into a proper real mosaic with plastic tiles. I'm laser cutting the tiles myself from acrylic sheets, scraps from work.
Stay tuned for the final piece as it will be my big face reveal ahahaha

Tile 1/64


Hmmmm the program isn't too streamlined for public use at the moment, I'll let you use it but you'll have to forgive anything that doesnt work as you expect. Also here's a single tutorial image.
The images you add are not altered, it automatically makes copies so there's no risk of losing files and you can try out different settings with the same images easily.
A very few combinations of settings wont work, and I dont know why.

Spoiler

Download: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DrmWb7SFO8ZQzCTtgCaSwfvLf2GYTDwc/view?usp=sharing

EDIT: I fixed a couple of glitches and problems with the program so it runs a bit better now