Everyone on dA is probably aware of atch Together by now. Thing is, I decided to put up my "Laughing orca" as a toy design there a month ago and although it already got 110 votes on its own, recently additional votes have been coming at a snail's pace. So I need you guys to speed things up a bit. Go and vote for the little orca to be made!

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Most art tutorials suck.
This issue has been bugging me for a long time already and I'd like to write why. I will mention canines often, first because they're a good and known example, second because every other tutorial here seems to be about them. I'm also keeping animal tutorials in mind, but this all can apply to many other art tutorials as well.

I find that people often don't understand one thing: tutorials will not magically insert skill into your head (or hand). They're not books and their space is limited so they need to get straight to the point and explain that one thing they were made to explain. You'll already need to know how to draw if you want to make use of them. A tutorial on how to draw dogs will not teach you perspective, foreshortening, colour theory, gesture drawing and many, many other things you need to learn in art. They also can't replace that one magical thing done over and over again for improvement: practice. And I'm not talking about repeating the same thing the tutorial is telling you, I'm talking about going somewhere else and drawing a hundred different dogs before you finally really learn how to draw them. It's not that you shouldn't put what the tutorial is telling you onto the paper, but you shouldn't rely on it as if it's the only source of reference you have. A tutorial is short and limited so keep in mind that what it's teaching you also is.

Another thing I keep noticing is that people apparently can't tell what a tutorial is. A TUTORial is meant to explain and teach you how to do something. A sequence of WIP-s without any explaination isn't a tutorial.
Also, a tutorial on making comics is NOT a tutorial explaining how someone drew a page of their comic. The kind of tutorials I mentioned in latter example is something that spread like a plague across the published art-teaching world. I keep seeing books like these all the time. Books that promise to teach you how to draw, say, dogs and their "lessons" go along these lines: First you draw a circle for the head. Then you draw a circle for the body. You connect them to make a neck. Then add a muzzle, ears and eyes and you're done! . I bet you've seen this a lot. This is not teaching you how to draw dogs, this is teaching you how to draw, and really terribly, might I add.
I'll use a simple analogy from a competely different area to clarify the difference between a good and bad tutorial. Imagine someone is trying to explain to you how to solve an equation, for a test. After they finished expaining, you try solving the same equation again and you solve it correctly. But you get an F on the test, because apparently you can only solve that one equation you were taught to solve. Another teacher comes and actually explains to you how to solve that type of equation and why you solve it the way you do. You go take the test and you get a good grade because you know how and why you have to solve that type of equation in a certain way.
My point is, tutorials that just teach you how to re-trace the same thing are not good tutorials. Tutorials explaining WHY and HOW are.

If you're making a tutorial yourself, first: please, KNOW HOW TO DRAW! If you're not completely comfortable with drawing something and knowledgeble on the subject, don't teach others how to draw it.
Second, if you're trying to teach someone how to draw a dog, please refrain from using your own style. A stylized dog's proportions won't be useful to anyone but a copycat.

I'm not saying all tutorials are doomed or useless, but a good tutorial should be done by someone who actually knows what they're doing and offer explanations rather than just keep stating: "You do what you see in the pictures". And art tutorials are good for getting tips, but that's about it.

I try not to post too many unnecessary journals but I loved this video so much I wanted to let you guys know about it:
[link]
Awesome concept
Fun Facts about the video (copied info):
* The video was shot all stills - roughly 3225 still photos for the entire video, using one camera, hanging from the ceiling for the main body of the movie.
* It took 4 weeks before shooting to create an animated computer generated storyboard for the video, with 3d dummies for the characters.
* It took only 2 days of shooting for the live actors on set to re-create the 3.5 minutes computer sequence, frame by frame.
* Some of the bed sheets used in the video were taken from Oren’s own bedroom and are now considered collectors items, worth at the moment not very much and therefore used as bed sheets. ()

Now something random, how come we see furry and fuzzy animals as cute but skinny animals as ugly? I mean, most people would consider this:[link] to be cuter than this [link] . Wouldn't it make sense vice versa? I understand liking cute little babies, parental instinct and stuff, but in case of humans, we get fuzzier as we grow (hair, chest hair, beard...). Our babies are almost hairless, shouldn't we like animals that are more like that?

Every now and then I run into a discussion in the furry community about anthros and furries and what I usually hear is that characters along the lines of Simba or Bambi are also anthros or furries. A lot of people are surprised at this (me being no exception) and yet something doesn't quite work with that statement. I tried looking up official definitions but they rarely take into account the massive furry fandom or even agree about the definition and therefore, I reject your reality and substitute my own.

The "talking animal=anthro" theory doesn't make sense because first, it doesn't fit the literal translation of the term anthropomorphism and second, the bigger issue, is that one Blacksad and one Simba were not supposed to represent the same thing. Blacksad represents a human, even if he is cat-like. Simba, however, represents a real animal. The language Blacksad speaks in is English, while Simba speaks in some form of lion language that a normal human couldn't understand. It's obvious they're not the same.

For starters, let's look at the definition of anthropomorphic and what it actually means. Anthropomorphic comes from "anthropos" meaning human and "morphe" meaning shape. So anthropomorphic means human-shaped, humanoid. Simba is not shaped like a human nor is he meant to represent a human.
But wait, he has eyebrows and irises! True. But then that would make any kind of animal, talking or non-talking one, an anthro and that kind of makes the definition meaningless and vague. You'd have to draw a dog in a cartoony comic in a completely different or realistic way if you didn't want it to be defined as anthro. I think an animal character needs a bit more than a few human-like details to be defined as anthropomorphic just as an anime character needs more than cat ears and a tail to be anthro.

But, if talking animals aren't anthros, what are they? There's a pretty nice term that fits them, it's called personification. I'm surprised at how little people use this word especially since we've been mentioning it in school long before we mentioned anthropomorphism (also, we mentioned personification in Croatian literature class, but anthropomorphism was mentioned in an art class. The first term deals less with the character's appearance than anthropomorphism does). The word "personification" comes from "persona" (person, obviously) and "ficare", to make. Note that it doesn't say homoficare (homo=human), but rather it refers to a rational mind that, even though it's based on a human mind, doesn't necessarily have to be human. A person in this case refers to a rational, sentient being, ergo, a personified animal is an animal with a rational human-like mind instead of appearance. But it's still an animal and supposed to be animal.

I think I explained it the best I could, but even if my reasoning isn't correct, we have two definitions for two completely different concepts and yet we only use one. Why?

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Off topic, I read somewhere that Kung Fu panda totally beat Wall-E at Annie awards and got 10 awards, while Wall-E got none. I loved both movies (how could I not love Asian kung fu anthros?) but I think we know who the winner was supposed to be. Annie awards, you fail and I refuse to see your awards as any kind of accomplishment anymore.

I only recently found out that those fluid black lines in comics are done with a brush. Now I'd like to experiment with it but I have some pretty pricy brushes. Does anyone know if ink can destroy those brushes? Do you need a special brush for working with ink or are normal brushes fine for both inking and watercolor?

Also, I managed to use masking fluid successfully for the first time. However, I still have problems with it. First, every time after I use it I have to sacrifice one brush. It gets all sticky and totally useless for anything. Fortunately I knew you shouldn't use good brushes for the job but still, if this goes on I'll have to buy brushes for every time I want to use masking fluid. Is there a way to clean the brushes after use? Second, I have problems putting the masking fluid on because it dries quickly and when I go over it again to fill in the holes it sticks to the brush. In short, I need tips on how to use the darn thing (with precision).

And another thing, anyone knows how you can protect the big acrylic pictures done on paper and canvas? My wolf family portrait is dying on me (it's on paper).

This isn't art related, but is anyone good with Dreamweaver? I want to make a website for myself but I lack knowledge and time so if anyone's willing to help I'd appreciate it greatly.



Imam izložbu slika u geodetskoj tehničkoj školi. Ako itko ide tamo moći ćete vidjeti i par slika koje nisu na deviantartu.