Haha, I say a lot that the one thing I'm glad World of Warcraft taught me is how to get the best use out of keybindings. It definitely saves time to have everything bound to keys.

Illustrator works fine with a Wacom tablet aside from occasionally getting a little confused and not letting you make new brushes with pressure sensitivity because part of the program thinks you don't have a tablet plugged in. I use the tablet for all my work in it, though to be honest I really don't rely much on pressure, since my working method is mostly about drawing the outline of a solid color shape, rather than making lines or brush strokes.

It's also kind of alien to the way most people work, and possessed of an arcane and sometimes-hostile user interface, as befits a tool old enough to vote.

also +1 for hotkeys, I always work with one hand on the keys and one on the tablet, with an ever-evolving set of custom keyboard shortcuts.

well jeez, louise, thanks for the tip! I had no idea. >________> I've been getting grouchy about having to go back to Photoshop when I'm inking and lettering in MS, and well, I don't hate coloring in MS either, except for the lack of 'copy merged'... but I guess I could set a macro on one of my tablet keys to merge all, copy, undo, paste.

This program just keeps getting better and better! I already ink to make for mostly filled in areas for my flatting anyway, this just saves me a step.

And +2 for hotkeys. For me the irreplaceable one is having brush size up and brush size down. I've got that plus my eraser/pen, select color, zoom, pan, etc, all on one hand, so it makes things pretty fast there.

So I've been using Krita for the last two days and I can just say WOW.

I feel like a kid in a candy store. Its taking me some time to understand all the tools but everything is so much easier with real software.
In fact, I feel stupid for doing everything the hard way for so long....

Still no art to share as I've mostly been just messing around to get the feel of things.
but soon...

You don't need to go so far... just select all the layers from which you wish to copy, hit Ctrl+C, and Ctrl+V will create new layers with the copied/pasted content... you just need to merge those.

So this is the first thing I made in real image software. Its a landscape for a card.


I like how it turned out. Everything except the shading? Not really sure how to do that yet.
Any tips are appreciated.

That turned out really great, Anosina!

For shading, I think you'll find there are two major camps in comics: hard shadows (cell shading) and soft shadows (soft brush, or gradients). There's a little bit in-between wiggle room. I prefer mostly hard edges to my shadows closer to the light source, and soft shadows further away from a light source. That is however, a whole other topic! Glad you're digging the new software!

Thanks Kez,

And yes, I can cell shade like a BAMF.
But I'm trying to force myself to use gradient shading because most of my art idols use it.

Though, my weird Dr. Seuss style doesn't really fit it huh?

I use gradient shading in the ZP webcomic and I do it by hand (takes FOREVER). I think it might be weird to suddenly switch shading styles so I'm just trying to make it work.

eh...
ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...

Maybe Ill switch to cell shading? maybe I'll keep teetering on this edge where I hate the shading?
Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...

Yea idk...

Lovely background. Like you just stepped your art skills up by 5000% right there.

With shading, honestly, and I'm a big fan of softer shading, i think cel shading would look far better with your character art style. On the background, the real issue is that you only have one layer of shading, and it's not an interesting layer... it's just straight up transparent grey or maybe blue, which isn't adding any interesting atmosphere.

I'd add more layers of shading with more depth of color, that way, for example, the desert sand at the end of the page darkens around the edges to create the effect of a plane of field. You've done this by adding the gradient at the top, which gives the horizon length, but not so much at the bottom.

The simplest way to get started with shading is cool for shadows, warm for highlights, and never use gray. Adding a couple of layers of shading colors will add more depth.

Yea, I'm REAL lazy with shading. I actually hate doing it so skimp a lot.
I just need to buckle down and start doing more of it.

I have never use digital media before November, so most of my learning curve is trying to get my pen and paper style on a computer. :/

As far as this landscape goes, its a card background so it'll be mostly washed out anyway.
The laziness continues.

Tiana, I am probably going to switch to cell shading... I just hate making decisions... and change...

Thanks everybody

Give it a shot! It's always a bit of a chore to get the hang of new steps, but I really enjoy the shading stage on my comics, now. It really makes the art come to life! Glad you're getting the hang of the tablet as well. I've recently got MS5 to use with my Wacom, and I'm getting on really well with it - though I had to ask advice a few times from the guys here about how to do certain things, so if you get stuck on how to do a task, just post. These people know their stuff
Also, voting for cel-shading, too. And, IMO, it's quicker ... though that probably depends on how you're working. My gradient / painting skills are pretty poor, so things like that take me a lot longer.

Okay so, shading in real software requires WAY WAY more forethought. My layers look like garbage but the actually images turned out super great. I did two and you can very clearly see a progression in skill xD




My hand hurts from drawing. I don't think I have stopped since I download this program.
Any other tips and tricks are appreciated.

It really depends on what the purpose you use the software for...

I do my roughs in photoshop CS4, then for line art I now use Clip Studio paint Pro.

Also if I'm doing Illustrations I continue painting in CSP.. however if it's animation then I still have to take it back to Photoshop.

However given a choice, Clip Studio works seamlessly with the Waco & it's so reasonably priced anyone can afford it.