Gonna be a little late for the Alien Hominid anniversary, so here's some previews while you wait.

I'm hoping to finish either tonight, or early tomorrow.

Just thought I'd share this while I'm in the middle of redesigning some of my old OCs (small update at the bottom)

When drawing eyes for the first time, or drawing eyes you're not familiar with what often happens is that you'll draw one eye correctly, and the other eye will look off in some way. Be it misaligned, or it just doesn't match the other eye.

So how do you fix this? Well, what's something that's easy to draw and hard to screw-up? SHAPES!

Every eye can be broken-down into simple shapes, like a triangle, square, circle, or oval. This is your foundation. It's quick to draw, and takes a second to tweak if it doesn't look right. Basically, If the shapes look the same, then the eyes will look about the same.

Next you draw your eyes around those shapes:

These shapes now become a guide for you as you draw your eyes. Now you can see when either eye is off because those shapes are helping you concentrate in small areas instead of focusing on the entire eye at once.

Next you remove the guides:

Pretty solid looking eye sockets right? One thing to keep in mind is that even with these shape guides, there are occasions where the eyes still need to be tweaked a bit, and that's normal.

The last step is to just add the details and the pupils:

[NOTE: I changed the eye sockets at the bottom a slight bit to make the pupils look better]

And there you go! An easy and consistent way to draw eyes.

Hope you've learned something!

~Small update~

Now, what's been going on with me as of late. Pretty freaking hectic, but not because of personal reasons. No, it's because I have so many projects that I've started and left half finished. It's honestly starting to piss me off with how frequently this happens, and I'm trying to figure something-out to fix this. So I won't be doing too many art update just because everything just changes on a dime.

My apologies.

I'm constantly changing my plans, and I hate it, but I want to put-out something damn-it!

So here's my new priorities (Subject to change):

Firstly, I'm gonna put my focus on this quick Felix the Cat fan-art I've been working on in the last two days:

Recently fell in love with Felix's design and expressions after watching Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat, and this one's been going by super quick, and will vary my portfolio a bit. It's also a great character to study and improve my own OCs.

Next-up on the list is the Klonoa project:

Currently I've just been building a reference sheet, and just practicing how to draw the little fellow because the final product will essentially be like 9 drawings in one, so I want to get decent at drawing Klonoa.

The rest are still up for debate. My custom Linux theme is on hold at the moment, but it's mostly functional

I'm still need to make the graphics for the start menu, a couple menu graphics, change the text, and text colour. I also want to make custom wallpapers for all my monitors because why the hell not.

There's also this thing I sketched on a whim:

I thought I could finish it quickly, but it'll have to stay a sketch until I finish a couple projects.

So as you can see, I have many WIP projects I've been working on, and it's been annoying me to no end that none of them are finished yet because I want to show my art without having what feels like monthly gaps between them, or completely missing events.

I was thinking about this after my last post. Why not use the blog/news posts to provide updates and tips I've learned while making some pretty big projects.

I mean at worst it will get ignored like most of my other posts, and at best it might give an idea of my thought process, it might help others who are stuck in a similar place, and it could get some kind of feedback for my work.

If you don't want to be bombarded by some WIP art and a bunch of digital art jargon feel free to skip this, you're not missing much.

If you want context for what I'm working on, look at my last post. I don't want to retype the whole thing, but basically:

>I use Linux

>I found out how themes are made

>I draw good

Now that that's out of the way, on with the show!

~~~Table of Contents~~~

(Use Ctrl+F to navigate the post if you want)

~>Updates

~>What's new

~>Tricks Learned

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~~~~Updates~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Since my last post I changed the menu button very slightly. I'm talking about unnoticeable to the untrained eye unnoticeable

I basically redid the shading on the orb so that you can actually see the logo when I use the theme (the actual sprite's size is about 25x100 pixels). The reason why I make these sprites so big is because they look really cool at that size, I don't need to work that hard if I want to upscale these sprites, and because pixel-art looks too sharp for what I'm doing (which is a Windows Vista/7 style). [Plus I might reuse some of these sprites elsewhere]

Next, I redid the clock. Last time it was red digits with a black background, now it's just cyan digits with no background.

[The red borders aren't there in the actual theme, they're only there to help with making the sprites]

The reason for the change was again because it was hard to see the numbers when the theme was in use (this time it was 12x20 pixels), and the black background the old digits had also made it look unfinished because you couldn't see the borders around the numbers.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~What's New~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Since the last post I've made a couple new things for the theme, they're all unfinished and untested, so they're going to probably change a lot.

First-off I've made the "Show desktop" and "Window List" buttons

They're still kinda rough, and I've put them on hold for now to focus on other sprites.

For those wondering: most of the looks you can give Linux have the "Show Desktop" button on the left side next to the start menu instead of the far right like on Windows; bit annoying to get used to, and I can't change it with the look I'm currently rocking.

The "Window list" button is kinda self explanatory: it basically lists all the windows you have open in a pop-up menu. It's kind of like a slower Alt+Tab (which is also a thing on Linux). I just did it because it was an option I might use.

Now for the good stuff!

I decided to work on the Window borders recently.

It's still not quite done, I still need to finish this one and make like 7 more variations for each state these buttons can be in. My goal with this project is to make a theme that's reminiscent of Windows Vista/7 without being an exact copy of a Windows Vista/7 theme. So I took little things I liked from each OS and made my own. Like the colours of the buttons are the same colours Mac OS uses, the shape and feel is supposed to be reminiscent of something you'd see on Windows, and some symbols that are being used are from Linux.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~Tricks Learned~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Working with something like this is surprisingly tough. Most of the challenge comes from making something that looks good while tiny, that it fits the aesthetic I'm going for, and that works within the limits of the theme. Which made me realize that I should probably look a my work from a distance more often instead of looking at it from my chair.

Most of these desktop assets I've made for this theme are done using vectors with gradients. Which is a bit surprising, but it makes sense if you want something that you can stretch horizontally for an infinite amount, and is easy to scale. For example here's the gradient and the colours I used for the taskbar:

One of the taskbar buttons:

And the clock segments:

Where it really became an issue was with the Window borders. Gradients in Krita only go in a straight line, so it makes it really hard to "curve" these gradients for the corners. One solution I had was to use the airbrush tool to do the corners, but colour matching all of it was a big pain in the ass and it didn't even look good.

After a while of tinkering with the airbrush I noticed that I only really needed to darken the edges with the airbrush, and everything else could stay the same and still look good. After realizing that I remembered that Krita has a thing called "Styles" that you can apply to layers as a way to add a little bit of flair like gradients, glowy effects, and shadows to that specific layer. One of these styles called "inner glow" outlines the whole layer and adds a little gradient inside the drawing like so:

[Black shapes with a red inner glow added to them]

And so what I did was I took the entire window border layer and added this glow effect around it which made it pop-out exactly the way I wanted.

Before:

After:

Amazing what a little gradient can do sometime! The little inner corners between the top and sides are a little iffy looking, but that's the best I can do, and even then this will be so small that no one will even notice.

Well better end this post before I either stay up too late or make it way too long to read.

Hope that the 5 people who read the whole thing at least learned something.

...I'm going to bed now.

As some of you may know, I have a second PC running Arch Linux that I do most of my side stuff while I draw on my laptop. This second PC has IceWM installed which to make it quick for people who don't know/care about this: it's the way your Linux can look. There's plenty out there like KDE, Gnome, LXQT, and so on. IceWM is a good option for older computers because it's not running like 30 programs in the background, with the trade-off being that you need to manually configure all the programs you want it to run.

Anyways while I was configuring IceWM to do the things I wanted, I looked into the themes folder and found that making themes is as easy as making an image and sticking it into the right folder with the right name.

I can draw right? Why don't I just make my own little theme for IceWM!

Well turns-out it takes a little longer to do than I thought, but I thought I'd let out a small sneak-peek of the project for fun.

Firstly, the button for the "Start" menu which includes a redesigned IceWM logo.

The Taskbar with the Minimized, Inactive, and Active buttons respectively

And finally the assets for the LED clock in IceWM

Progress:

Taskbar (80% finished) [only missing a few icons and some testing]

Window Borders (0%)

Custom Wallpapers (1%) [I have the ideas, but nothing is drawn yet]

Hope you've enjoyed this little sneak-peek, see you next update!

Alright, my Pico Day drawing is done and now I'm just chilling for a while to get my energy back.

So. Here's what happened during my absence:

The Pico Day drawing is done, but the animation I made is still unfinished. What I'll do is I'll cut it short and polish that instead (going from a full fight scene to just a simple looping animation). It won't be released on Pico Day (that's why I made the drawing instead), but it will be a nice little something once it is. Might give a sneak peak of it on Pico Day.

Been busy helping my parents lately, by helping them with electronics and giving them suggestion on certain things, and unpacking old boxes. What's cool is while unpacking these boxes I've found a box full of computer parts that I forgot I had, and I found a graphics card that was perfect for my old XP Machine.

The card on the left was the old card I used (Radeon X300SE), and the card on the right is the "new" card (Radeon X1300). It's a big upgrade for this machine even though these are a drop in the bucket compared to the newest graphics cards.

It's weird how this 2 decade old machine I used while growing-up is still being used to this day! Granted it's not used for much, just some light browsing, playing music, watching a few videos, and sometimes playing a few games...Kinda want to test how good it is while making a drawing just for the hell of it.

~~~

Now that that's done and over with, what's next for little 'ol me?

I want to say things will be going back to normal, but right now I'm not quite sure anymore because there's a couple things that could make it difficult, for now this is what I have in mind:

Firstly, I want to get down and dirty with Linux again. I've got this "new" laptop that I want to install it on, and the setup I have on this old XP machine works really well and it's super fast too, so I'll tinker with it, fill-out those config files, make nice shortcuts for it, and even make a custom desktop theme as a nice cherry on top. And what's cool about it is that once I'm done with it on my XP machine, I can easily transfer all those settings to the laptop and have it work seamlessly. God I love Linux (and BSD).

Next, I want to make that Klonoa fan-art before the release of the new Klonoa remakes, I've had this idea in the back burner for way too long and I want to get it out there.

Then, I want to take the time to redesign some old OC's I've created, not so much with the Rabbit OCs, but all the other needs a little facelift especially the humanoid ones. I've learned a lot since I last drew them (sometimes in the weirdest places), and some of these characters are kinda cringy to look at now.

Finally, I'd like to dive a bit more into animation by doing short animation loops to practice myself. Though, I don't know if I'll continue using Pencil2D, or switch to OpenToonz instead. I mean, I like using Pencil2D even though it's crap compared to the rest, but it's the good kind of crap. Like it's crappy, but not crappy enough that I can't do shit. Finding workarounds is half the fun in this program, heck I'm even hacking the save files in order to access features that are too buggy to use inside Pencil2D. It's fun for all the wrong reasons, and it doesn't help that the Pencil2D devs are also fuelling me by telling me to not use certain unstable features in the program.

Commissions? It could happen. Not now but maybe sometime soon. Who knows.

That's all for now. Hope to see you on Pico Day.

So originally I wanted to make an animation for Pico day, but I'm starting to realize that one month with my current animation skills is not enough to make a minute long animation. So instead I'll do a drawing, and I'll try to polish-up what I've made so far and hopefully have them both ready by Pico day.

Bit of a shame Krita doesn't let me make vector animations with its vector tools, now I'm stuck getting used to the more limited Pencil2D which has buggy vector tools, no opacity, no lasso tool, and no text tool.

But hey, for as much as I disappoint the Pencil2D devs for using their vector tools, and it being even slower than Krita's vector tools. All that matters is that it works for making vector animations, and it isn't as complicated to use as OpenToonz.

[might need to look at tutorial videos for OpenToonz, as it's more useful than Pencil2D but way harder to learn]

That's all I have for now. Things should return to a somewhat normal pace after Pico Day. I do want to practice animating a little more by making short little animations to get used to Pencil2D's workflow, and I'm thinking of potentially doing commissions if all goes well (still not sure on that).

See you next update!

Just a quick little update about what going-on as of late.

You might have noticed I kinda just stopped posting drawings after a while, and the reason is that I'm getting a little busy as of late with multiple big projects.

Firstly, I want to focus on making something special for this upcoming Pico Day. It will take a bit as I'm doing something that kinda out of my comfort zone, and I need to learn by trial & error a few times.

Secondly, I've been getting my hands dirty with Linux again to see if I can improve my setup a little further. I was planning on buying a new laptop, but with how things are going I think I'll just use this slightly newer laptop one of my uncles found in the dump in the mean time.

Thirdly, I've been doing a private commission for someone so that's also eaten a bit of time I'd do for drawing. It's also preparing me if I want to do this type of thing in the future.

And finally, I've currently trying to get into animation for the hell of it, and in my usual fashion, I'm going all out with it. Will it be painful? Yes! But I learn a whole lot quicker when my face is dragged in the mud, so it ends-up being worth it in the end...in a way.

So there's a lot on my plate, but not a lot to show unfortunately. I might do the odd doodle on occasion if I feel like I need to take a little break, but I think things should be a little more normal after Pico Day; still not 100% certain on that but I'll update on what's going-on afterwards.

Hey would you look at that, I have over 10 fans now. Glad to know I'm at least doing something right with my work.

Thanks for following! Things may be slow at the moment because I'm contemplating whether I should start freelancing right away or find a decent job that's about an hour away from where I live, but expect some more style experimentation, and perhaps even a little bit of animation from me in the future.

Thanks again!

Recently created a Ko-Fi account because why not, it could be useful. I've got nothing there at the moment though, but if you have any suggestions feel free to ask. I'm still a little new to this crowdfunding thing.

https://ko-fi.com/nothanytpm