studding art theory can be hard, at least for me it is: I am dense and stupid. Although I can apply a concept properly I feel this urge to understand it because the need for jumps in logic drives me insane. With when studding art theory this becomes a problem

If they are to specific in their explanation of why you have to do a thing I end up not applying it if I don't agree with that specific explanation (dense) or the way it doesn't work with out a jumps in logic (stupid)

if they are deliberately vague OR WORSE they say "is SubJeCTive :))), u ll known when it fells right" NO I CANT, THATS WHY I READING YOUR BOOK !!! >:/

so what I am trying to do about it?:

applying Semiotic Theory?

what is?

is the systematic study of sign / processes and the communication of meaning

&

a sign is defined as anything that communicates intentional and unintentional meaning or feelings to the sign's interpreter.

how does it work?

I don't want to do the same thing that I am complaining about at the end I ll leave some homework but with the Wikipedia description from before and this graft u ll think u might get the gist of it:

Why is cool to apply it here?

when applying semiotic u can abstract the subject of the study enough to get to the **intend** of the theory, to give it a meaning, witch shift things around: it no longer matter if the theory it is wrong of right. Now the goal is to find the right intentions for what u want to accomplish and the theory is there to achieve that intend

for example: your composition is no longer wrong or right coss it fails in x or y, your composition can be wrong or right coss it is not doing what u had in main for your drawing.

conclusion:

this seems to be a healthier way to approach studding this stuff, it is difficult to vocalize what u have internalize and saying wrong stuff is spooky. Using semiotic helps me to take the feeling of being wrong all the time and stuff not felling right and makes it in to this is not doing what it wanted it to do, how can I stare it back in to the right intend/meaning.

It also helps with the felling of not seeing the full picture, if a theory is wrong as long as the intend works the drawing can end up looking good since every element is relative to each other (objective vs subjective criticism and all of that )

sources:

most of this I made it the fuck up, but the real stuff is here if u want to read more:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotics

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlpOaY-_HMk

https://opentext.wsu.edu/theoreticalmodelsforteachingandresearch/chapter/semiotic-theory/

Animation

a lot of programs do image editing, texturing, drawing, etc but the main thing that kept me in Clip

studio is that the animation system are easy to use. For example, if u want to make a dum gif of a

drawing I can just extend the animation timeline in the workspace menus and start making an

animation with the possibility of adding sound effects and match more

having the same tools for drawing and animation is so goooooood

if u known animation terms most of the timeline settings are self explanatory

timeline modifiers/entities/modes

(again all of this is my interpretation i know I am making a lot of assumptions here, the names and

definition can and will be wrong, pls don't kill me :/)

header

the vertical red line is the header, this is what's is currently being display

onion skin

this displays a color silhouette of the last/next frame u can configure it in the animation settings

play mode

there is a stop line (u set it up with the playback time but u also can also drag it out manually after the

settings) everything between the starting line and the stop one is in the video. If u enable loop mode

the video will start again once finish

timeline elements

it reminded me of the flash 8 animator (I was so long ago that i cant remember a thing about flash

outside of basics) the mayor change is that you need to keep a folder structure for your photograms

clip

those horizontal gray lines are called clips by the program, the space that they are on is supposed to

be a folder in the time line and each cel in them represent 1 frame according to your specification in

the time line settings. The clips can be split so any transforms or properties aren't share between

them, if a clip is empty it means that is not visible in that frame.

cels

this are the current assigned layer to be visible of that respective clip/folder, if in cel mode, the name

of the layer should be visible otherwise they appear as those little triangles at the bottom of the clip.

cel controls:

1. new animation folder: creates a new layer folder

2. new animation cel: creates a new layer inside the current frame/clip/folder

3. specify cels: lets u pick the current cell of the frame/clip

4. delete specified cels: lets u clear the current cel of the frame/clip

keyframes

this need to be enabled

these are the current transform value of a given cel at that frame in the timeline, if the keyframes are

enable in that clip the program interpolates the changes in values in frames

keyframe controls:

5. disable keyframe editing: disables the use of keyframes in the current clip

6. Layer Mask I don't know :/ i cant remember

7. deletes the current keyframe

8. creates a keyframe and it lets u decide the interpolation

this enables u to change all the values of the cel

u cant modify cel values once keyframe mode is enable u need to disable it for any cel changes and

that is ...

the FUKING KEYFRAME system

using keyframes complicates the timeline a little, since there is no base transforms values for clips any

changes are drag along to the next clip, witch at a certain point makes it difficult to center images, that

why u need the good practice of splitting the clips at the start so there is a beginning mid an end

coos the interpolation is automatic once enabled.

this is annoying + the fact that u can t animate the howl scene in one go means that u need to

have a separate workflow for the movement and drawing of a cel since the transform changes

aren't track in cel mode making it SO TEDIOUS ++++ the onion skin doesn't do keyframes

neither reeeeeeeee

the 2D camera

the camera is just a clip/folder that's always in keyframes, in the the viewer appears as a blue

rectangle, everything outside of it isn't in the frame.

Having the camera work inside of the cel structure fells so good, any element outside of the camera

isn't affected by its movement also there ARE onion skins for the camera movement

After delaying escaping windows for so long I decided

to finally do it, for that, I need to escape Clip studio. I

love Clip studio but I don't like the Linux port

I been putting off the change coss I always gaslight

myself in to believing that the other programs are too

different and are a pain to adapt to

the next steep is to turn this in to a check list and start

adjusting one check at a time

Why did I fell in love with clip studio?

I really didn't use that many fancy toys anyway so I think if I wont be using it any more I should tally up what it was good for, as a base line any future drawing program ( ps: since u can code plugins and is open source I had been rly interested in contributing to Krita for a while)

this is my CLIP studio

there are many others but this one is mine

# bare necessities

I like programs as close as default settings as possible so no changes there outside of the memory usage, this is the template I use the most

# my settings tab

I m writing them down so I can look for the shortcuts or lack there off once I change

## Export settings

I never had to use any other program/plugin beside the occasional video editor for final passes. The

export options are great, the png and jpg options never crashed the program unlike others and nether

did for exporting multiple files / animations( I only did mp4s and gifs) the only program that I used that

was this user friendly was aseprite

(for exporting 2D sprites this works great)

Edit settings

the * means that they are mostly use in shortcuts or outside of the tab

Change color of line to drawing/convert to drawing color

makes anything selected that's not transparent in to the current picked color

Hue/Saturation/Luminosity

" ctrl + U "

this sliders help a lot when fixing color / editing photos

Transform

" ctrl + T "

I have the keyboard shortcut burn in to my memory by now. Cant remember if the other programs

work the same as this one but I am writing it down anyway.

If nothing is selected the transform just gabs the current selected layer/layers lets u transform its

properties and move it around :

and the most important part is that once its done (pressing ok | enter) it goes back to the tool u

had before the transform

ps:

if u hold shift while moving the selected object, the movement gets anchored to the x or y axis

Change canvas Size

I was use to input the changes with out a visualization of how it ll look, the canvas size lets u

freehand it, this is comfy for photo bashing and edits that always en up using more space

Select settings

Color Gamut

This is just from time to time to pick a color from the image

selection tools legend

THIS IS SOOOO COOOL, once u are done selecting, the legend appears with the stuff that u most

commonly use when doing so. This makes so many of the tools there obsolete since its so fast just to

use the context menu

(at least to me, my rpm is terrible put I can still pull a 21 population archer rush in a good day)

Filter settings

I mainly use it to apply the motion and gaussian blur and to render the perlin noise

Workspace menus:

layer system

this is the standard with color coding witch helps a lot when animating

the Navigator

using this to move in a zoom out drawing is a must for me now

tools... are fine in most programs, this is more about brushes

I m pretty sure that u can just import photoshop brushes to clip studio. This are most of the ones I kept

but I just use 3 or 4

stabilization

I might be using a lot of stabilization , in clip studio there isn't almost any input lag while doing so.

I end up going in between 6 and 10

lock

This is a cool feature, it keep the values as default so it resets any other modification not lock before

changing brushes

1. one or two with no pressure for line art/ edits/ painting the only difference is that one look cleaner

than the other

2. one textured one with pressure for size but no for roughness, that doesn't mix in the first stroke

with itself but it does when u start another stroke:

3. one oil one with pressure and roughness for mixing color

4. and one for "line art" with pressure and roughness but no color mixing

if I can help it I try to use the same size of brush when doing lines but it seems like the program adjust

the size to the zoom? I don't know :/

Day dreaming

I used Paint Tool SAI for so many years, then I changed to photoshop CC 2019 for some months until

I ended up in CLIP studio for the better animation timeline (if i recall correctly the single layer

animation in photoshop was super good but the multiple one gave me some issues)

from SAI to photoshop I only lost my brushes but photoshop had that super feature that I used to love.

When u hold shift the cursors anchors to an x or y axis and it lets u draw a straight line.

THIS WAS AWESOME, for delimiting boundaries, making quick edits and mainly not having to use a

line/shape tool for quick stuff that doesn't need to look perfect:

SEEEE?

This might have spoil me a little bit. in CLIP studio there is something similar: it saves the last location

where the brush was used and lets u create a line from there, this might be more convenient and

useful but the photoshop way felt so GOOOD

I MUST get that feature, if it exist i ll need it if it doesn't i ll code it myself if I had to

hi!

Its been so long since I last drawn anything and I wanted to make the 100 and 1 time starting to draw from 0 in to a fun series of post ( its more for me coss I always said I ll gonna do it but I never type nothing :/ )

I m going to start from 0, fuck clip studio and the crashes that corrupt 5 minutes of animation, fuck photoshop and its ram munching we going in to Krita.

How do u guys study composition?

After reading lots of books and stuff I came to the conclusion that paintings/drawings are composed by 2 parts:

the negative and positive spaces

the negative space according to Wikipedia is empty space around and between the subject(s), not the subject itself, forms an interesting or artistically relevant shape so to me its that the spaces are the separation of artistically relevant shapes in a image/idea/scene

the tone/value map:

shapes in an image/idea/scene aren't always delimited by lines or color, but they seem to be delimited by the difference in value/tone of the color (this is not directly the light of the scene, it can be but there are more factors in it) and the panther made by the grouping of those values/tone

One influences the other, the tone map need the space to delimitate shapes and forms of its values and the space needs the value to segregate the content of an image/idea/scene in to spaces

This might not be right but I like to see it this way :)

it seems that we prefer those artistically relevant shapes or at least that could be one way to interpret the Law of Pragnanz. Assuming that s right then we can say that grouping shapes in a meaningful way lead to a more interesting composition.

In practice?

(I m dum ://// and i been doing homework on it for a while, but i never seem to get a nice grasp on it)

I saw this in a book shop the other day and wanted to do a "study":

The Girl with the Lizard (1884)

[Ernst Stückelberg](https://artvee.com/artist/ernst-stuckelberg/)

first the black lines as the main focal points

(i know the it ugly, I use the gray lines to delimit the main separation of tones and patterns inside of the spaces and the black lines to delimit the negative and positive space in the frame)

At a fist glance I took the girl and the lizard as the main focal points of the painting but the negative space didn't seem right :

Then I saw the side of the rock and the girl not looking directly at the lizard and got the impression that this was like a photo took rly close to the girl as if the camera was focus on the surface of the rock where the girl is resting her hand

So I join the rock and the negative space made more sense, there are 3 layers of "focus" the main one, the near one an the background if i do that:

ps: the framing

I cant put my finger on it but the framing is interesting, from what I can remember in most places they tell u that your goal is to keep the eyes of the viewer inside of the frame but to me, most element of the painting imply that this is a part of a bigger picture, the girl looking away, the reflection of the sun the focal point so near the edge. I don't know, i like how it looks 

the tone/value map

since the shapes of a drawing are compose of patterns and values, I like to make a tone map after delimiting the spaces in the drawing (this way its easier to merge shapes, the Law of Pragnanz and all of that dark magic stuff):

Sooo, what can I take away from this?

so not guiding the eyes outside of the framing isn't always bad?

If it is deliberately made, it seems like it could work. Although I m too dense to parce what the dude wanted to say with the way the painting is frame the intend seem to be clear and works

eeeeee... this is a interesting way of making a focal point?

if a I wanted to make a painting of 2 things (me being stupid) I most likely would had made at least the 2 focal points in to separated shapes

and FUCK DEFAULT KRITA:

the default layout feels blotted to me, the color sampler and transform don't go back to the last tool that u where using once you are done using them ( if u apply a transform it means that I m done, same with the color one. It gets rly annoying to go back to the brush each time :/ )

this is a skill issue and i need to research more

TLDR

I always wanted to do a blog but never made it, so yea

any feedback is welcome, this is not the right way of doing stuff but the way I do it, I m still learning as I go :)

I really needed it to have the game out for my own sanity, I'll keep working on it anyway

I ll try to start posting more "finished" games from now on, working alone is hard, sr :/

so yeah, can't wait to die broke, with cirrhosis and paying alimony

It started as a funny cod zombies games for newgrounds and I keep going for stuff outside of the scope, now it barely run on browser.