Set up your fresh Elementary OS install to kick ass for art!

I recently fell in love with Elementary OS when I was looking around for a way to spice up my computing and workflow. After several hours of tinkering and having fun, I decided to write a fairly complete script for installing all the stuff that I need as an artist. Perhaps another artist out there will want to use this on a fresh Elementary OS install as well. If that's the case, go to the link above, download the .iso file, use unetbootin to make a live stick for testing Elementary OS and installing, and then use the script provided below. Here goes!

Copy and paste this script into an empty text file in your home folder, my good Linux user, and then save the file as 'elemosautoinstall.sh'.

 #!/bin/bash  
 sudo software-properties-gtk &&  
 sudo apt-add-repository ppa:versable/elementary-update -y &&  
 sudo add-apt-repository ppa:otto-kesselgulasch/gimp &&  
 sudo apt-get update &&  
 sudo apt-get install elementary-tweaks elementary-wallpaper-collection wingpanel-slim super-wingpanel elementary-.*-theme elementary-.*-icons indicator-synapse firefox adobe-flashplugin vlc ubuntu-restricted-extras libavcodec-extra-53 libdvdread4 unace rar unrar p7zip-rar p7zip sharutils uudeview mpack lha arj cabextract lzip lunzip icedtea-plugin scribus inkscape gimp krita mypaint gimp-gmic audacity openshot -y &&  
 sudo apt-get update &&  
 sudo apt-get upgrade &&  
 sudo apt-get dist-upgrade &&  
 sudo apt-get autoremove &&  
 sudo reboot  
 done  

Now, in terminal, navigate to your home folder, and the type:

 ./elemosautoinstall.sh  

This is going to do a few things:

1) Run the software sources configuration app so you can choose your additional software sources.
2) Add PPA's so you can get some custom stuff for Elementary OS as well as GIMP.
3) Install additional Elementary OS components, some archive management components, and pretty things to customize the look of your desktop.
4) Install some key programs: GIMP, G-mic (GIMP add-ons), MyPaint, Krita, Inkscape, Scribus, Audacity (audio editing), and Openshot (because you wanna make videos of your art process for youtube, right?).
5) Update and upgrade your OS.
6) Reboot.

After all this is done, you can start kicking ass with your Elementary OS install, and start kicking ass with your art!

Merry Grav-Mass!

Them there lines and funny figures.

Its been a bit since I last posted, so I figured this ought to feature some quality eye candy and a bit of insight. I've been rendering some of the final line art for characters in Arcane Knights, and thought I would share a bit of that as well as some process show & tell. The first pic details two playable female characters up on one sheet:

They read well at a distance, and when magnified display quite a bit of detail. This deviates from the painterly style I usually post here, but the process of creating line art for the characters requires me to be explicit with my designs, which aids the 3D artists when they set out to render one of these characters. When painting I can imply detail with a few quick values and let the viewer's eye fill in the rest. Since this is a bit different situation, I thought I would show the process with another playable character from the game, Winton (he's a bomb-chucking wizard).

He comes off pretty sassy. Again, he reads from a distance. Here's a close-up:

I used two brushes with identical dynamics, only one painted black and the other erased. This is a first generation line drawing, meaning that I didn't do a rough sketch and then trace over, but instead drew roughly and messy and continued to draw and erase, draws and erase. This kept the rough, gestural marks in the linework, which tends to keep things a bit more dynamic and alive. In pretty much any art program you can toggle between two brushes like this with hot keys, and its a method exclusively available to the digital medium (just try it with a pencil, wise guy).

After the line work is done, on a layer below, I paint in a 50% greyscale mask to begin toning, like so:

I do this so that I can use layer modes to paint more values and eventually color into the character. Again, this is a feature common to the majority of painting programs, and you'll see it in everything from concept art to comic books to industrial design. I've found on more than one occasion that if this silhouette doesn't read well, it means I need to fix the drawing before proceeding.


After that I start adding lights and darks, like so:

At this point, the drawing provides more than enough information for a 3D artist to build the character. All the details have been designed and clearly drawn and all the volumes have been indicated. I also added some toothy background texture to sell the drawing to interested parties. He can also be colored any which way with overlay or multiply layers, keeping everything nice and non-destructive. Word!

I intend to share some more info on the creation of digital art using Linux based software soon.

Also, I'm always available for commissions for a wide variety of subjects and media, so drop me a line and let's make some sweet art! Thanks!

Open Source Solutions and a Couple Tutorials

All hail! I've been working hard lately on a number of freelance projects as well as making headway for the Arcane Knights video game. All my output for these projects is executed in open source software, and I am but one of a growing crowd of artists choosing this path as opposed to using proprietary programs. I would like to speak briefly about my work flow for a typical project and what would be analogs in the proprietary world.

For most illustrations I start out by using MyPaint, which is somewhat equivalent to Autodesk's Sketchbook Pro or Corel's Painter. For a lot of digital artists, the process begins and ends with Photoshop, which is an admittedly badass program, but I prefer MyPaint for its highly flexible brush engine and infinite canvas. It supports decent layer functions, outputs to a growing variety of formats (.png - solid and alpha, .jpg, .tiff, .bmp, and the powerful .ora), and eliminates distractions from the task at hand - creating. The hotkey system is a cinch, customizable, and can be assigned to buttons on your Wacom tablet or a number of supported off-brand tablets. Needless to say, I rely on this smooth program as my primary.

For image editing, I will bounce my paintings into the GIMP. Thousands of folks have posted useful blog entries about various flavors of the GIMP in the past, so I don't intend to speak too much here. Its the Photoshop equivalent in the open source world, and it stands out more and more as newer versions of P-shop slowly remove various functionalities that were once assumed to be universal and basic components. Moreover, you can download a plug-in for GIMP to support the .ora format native to MyPaint, which is HUGE in terms of manipulating heavily layered paintings generated in other open source programs in a standardized format.

Third, I use Inkscape for my vector work. Tracing raster images, building clean and/or complex layouts and logos, or designing and outputting web graphics are the key tasks for which I deploy Inkscape the most. It has a little way to go before it catches up to Adobe Illustrator, but it supports layers, swatches, channels, tight node editing, and so forth - and it plays well with tablets to boot. You can output to darn near any file type imaginable, including a lot that I've never heard of, and I've had considerable success importing .ill files from Illustrator!

If you have any suggestions or ideas on 2D work flow in open source software, feel free to email me or comment below. Meanwhile, I've assembled a two-part tutorial on Youtube detailing some speed painting and rendering techniques, please check them out! Audio was recorded using Audacity and video was recorded using RecordMyDesktop and edited with OpenShot. Cheers!

Speed Painting Demo - Part 1
Speed Painting Demo - Part 2