Interested In Creating Portrait Art

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Pewskeepski
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Interested In Creating Portrait Art

Post by Pewskeepski »

Hello,

I'm interested in creating portrait art for UMC. However, I draw by hand and have never gone through the process of transferring it to the computer and doing all the shading/coloring/rendering, etc. I want to get into it but I am not sure where to start. I went through the tutorials on the Wesnoth wiki, but didn't feel like there was much direction in terms of what tools and software to use/get. Maybe I missed something? Anyway, I currently have Gimp and was thinking of checking out some tutorials for it on YouTube or something. I know in Kitty's thread she mentions using a tablet and Photoshop, but I have neither of those.

Ultimately, I'm interested in starting but not quite sure what to use. So any advice and direction would be appreciated :)
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thvk
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Re: Interested In Creating Portrait Art

Post by thvk »

If you are looking for a good and free editor i would suggest inkscape. Im not drawing Portait Art that much but i think its good. Gimp is more for pixelart and geometric art. Hope this helps.
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doofus-01
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Re: Interested In Creating Portrait Art

Post by doofus-01 »

Pewskeepski wrote: December 22nd, 2020, 3:53 pm I went through the tutorials on the Wesnoth wiki, but didn't feel like there was much direction in terms of what tools and software to use/get. Maybe I missed something? Anyway, I currently have Gimp and was thinking of checking out some tutorials for it on YouTube or something. I know in Kitty's thread she mentions using a tablet and Photoshop, but I have neither of those.
If you like to draw things on paper first, then transfer it to digital, you might need some camera (your phone maybe?) or scanner, but otherwise Gimp & a regular mouse are fine, you don't really need special tools. You can invest in a nice tablet, and it probably will be worth it if you are serious, but it's certainly not a requirement.
thvk wrote: December 22nd, 2020, 4:43 pm If you are looking for a good and free editor i would suggest inkscape. Im not drawing Portait Art that much but i think its good. Gimp is more for pixelart and geometric art. Hope this helps.
Inkscape is good for vector drawing. Gimp is good for raster/bitmap (and has vector capabilities, but it's not a strong suit, as far as I know). Vector drawing is clean and can be scaled to whatever size you want, but you work with paths - kind of like using an X-acto on a template. Raster is more like a paintbrush, it is what it is, but it's good for both portraits and pixels. Wikipedia has more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_graphics_editor

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WhiteRabbit333
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Joined: December 16th, 2020, 9:43 pm

Re: Interested In Creating Portrait Art

Post by WhiteRabbit333 »

I use Inkscape for vectors and Krita for pixel (Krita also has some vector capabilities though Inkscape would be better). If you want to get serious about digital drawing, a graphics tablet might be worth a look. Though they are rather expensive, and you might want to look around before investing in one. The main brands for graphics tablets that I know of are Wacom and Huion. Huion tends to be cheaper and you get more for what you pay for, and Wacom tends to be more expensive and you get quality instead of quantity. I tend to do sketches traditionally and if I want to go digital I take a photo and import it as a layer, (if you have a scanner you can do a lot more such as scanning line art.) Also, after you pick a drawing program, get familiar with keyboard shortcuts and the different tools you have, they can be life savers sometimes. Hope this helps.
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