Hi! I’ve been looking to discover new artists a lot lately, which inspired this thread! I think every artist has at least a few pieces that are their favourite. I’ll go with some of mine!
No AI is used in my process, progress pics are here!
Also, are there any pieces of art that you initially weren’t a big fan of when you finished them, but later warmed up to them?
I make vector arts. Irregularly I draw squids and octopi
Sometimes I make animations. This is my favourite: https://youtu.be/IXMqmM0BrdI
I don’t know if I’m the kind of “artist” you’re interested in, but I’ve been making a bunch of silly drawings and posting them lately. Some people seem to enjoy them. I’ve also written a fair amount of music but I generally don’t share that. I used to want to be a game developer and ended up getting good at programming, so-so at music, and basically hated everything I tried to make as far as graphics went.
Recently though, I’ve found it incredibly liberating to allow myself to make “bad” art – to not be too concerned with the quality and just concentrate on having fun trying to express an idea however I can.
This has mostly taken the form of “MS Paint”-like drawings that I’ve posted to !sillydrawingrequests@sopuli.xyz (and occasionally other communities). Usually I make them with KolourPaint. Sometimes I also use the GIMP or my own custom software.
I think my own overall personal favorite, so far, is “Sock Trek”. I posted it back in 2023 from kbin (RIP) to Otter’s sockpuppetsociety community, I think:
Probably the best of my recent silly drawings in terms of technique is this one in response to “An expressive window suffering from / enjoying the weather”:
The most popular (based on upvotes) seems to be my response to “E.T. (the alien) eating an unreasonable quantity of free samples at costco”:
I’ve occasionally made some other things that might be interesting to look at, like this hypnotic color spiral animation (first 90 seconds) from a program I wrote to experiment with graphics techniques a few years ago – https://files.catbox.moe/8y6d0n.mp4 – and a number of custom composites from anime screenshots.
Haha I love the sock characters! At first I thought they were worms on a string. They’re cute! You mention wanting to get into game development, which is cool! Got a particular genre or engine that you want to go for?
I used to use Game Maker waaaay back in the day – starting from when Mark Overmars had it hosted on his university website (before the .nl site even) and checked out of that community sometime after YoYo Games took over – which was… 18 years ago!?
I wrote a substantial amount of C++ code with GLFW and occasionally other libraries for many hobby projects over the years. I lost a lot of enthusiasm when Unity became popular, and at some point after that I realized that games are mostly art projects, and I was more interested in the tech side of it.
These days I mostly write Python and JavaScript with the occasional bit of C++ (or whatever is needed) for work. Sometimes that work gets visual, but a lot of it is webdev.
If I ever get back into gamedev, it’ll be indie dev to scratch a personal itch – most likely with my own code rather than an off-the-shelf engine.
I’m glad you enjoyed my characters. :-)
Three of my favorites from each classic category…
Animal photography:
Landscape/sky photography:
Chalk drawings, my favorite medium (aside from stop-motion/claymation):
Regular drawings:
Memes:
Those are some spectacular sky shots! Like, all of these are good, but those really stand out to me as impressive.
Thanks ❤️
Woah, now that’s a mixed bag! 😃 For the photography that sun peeking out of the clouds one has an almost angelic vibe to it. Is that a crepuscular ray I see? For the chalk drawings, I immediately noticed the Digital Circus characters. That show’s so fun to watch and I have no idea how it’s going to end. I like the bright and bold colours in the digital drawings, I haven’t played Kirby Air Ride in a long time but I’m glad that game still has its fans!
Thanks. I tend to use a mix of different drawing and coloring techniques to get the results (some aspects are traditional while others are digital).
I’m also just learning now that there’s a term for those kinds of sun rays. I did not know that before, I thought they were just “sun rays”.
I do 3D modeling (I hope that counts?). Right now I think my favorite is a a spacecraft I completed not too long ago, but the reality is that each one I produce is a learning experience. I’ve gotten better at making things look detailed, learning how to texture, and so on.
So something like the Caracal Heavy Anti-Air Gun, which is a few years old now, I sometimes look at it and see where I would do much better if I were to try to go back and do it now - but also where I was figuring out how to make things work (e.g., making the stabilizing feet actually work).
I got into 3D art not that long ago and can confirm each one is definitely a learning experience haha. It’s fun!
That’s a pretty detailed model! I like the gun part the most, very cool. The toon outline effect is also a nice touch. Are the tire treads bump maps or are they actually modelled?
So it’d usually be normal mapping, not bump mapping. Iirc bump maps are just height data and can’t hold normal information (surface face directions in short). Anyway it looks to me like either a normal map or more likely just a flat tire texture. The key tell is how the tire geometry is mostly just a cylinder. If you look at the edges it doesn’t follow the tire pattern.
This picture of the colloseum:
It took forever to prepare everything. One hour to get there, 40 minutes to wait in the line for the lift which goes all the way up on the roof of the Altare della Patria, and then waiting there for the sundown, again more than one hour, just before they close the roof at 19:15. I was the last person there still taking this picture while the security guard trying to convince me to go down with him.
I’m a real sucker for sunset and twilight, and I’m glad you got to stay up since that’s a really great photo! It’s kind of insane to think that there used to be thousands of people there (even conservative estimates reckon it would seat around 50,000!) almost two thousand years ago…
Seeing it in person, was it how you expected or more?
It’s a bit weird because it’s in the middle of a modern city, one more weird thing is that you can’t get in easily to explore like with other ruins, so you’re just on the outside looking at it.
But it is impressive especially when you get close to it and see what the weather did to it in thousands of years.
What are your favourite pieces of art that youve made?
everything I’ve made is shit. recent works instead: https://pixelfed.art/hilliard
Woah! That gandalf!!
Love the hand one and the portrait of the old man! I thought the bottle one was digital at first! You did a great job capturing the Photoshop selection effect
Artist here. I’m on instagram (@artbyflashmob) and Mastodon (@flashmobofone). I’m proud of my reimaginings of popular figures. I’ve also had two portraits of Patrick Mahomes autographed and resold by his foundation, which I’m HUGELY proud of.
Don’t use Instagram or Mastodon anymore otherwise I’d follow you, but these are great! I love that Pennywise one, there’s so much colour going on there in terms of hues and it accurately portrays the geometry of his face very well. Bill Skarsgard was terrifying in those movies haha. I also like the balloon covering up his eye, great composition too!
I like the outline kind of effect going on in the second one. The coat looks glossy because of the bright highlights and deeper blues. I also like how you did the flaps (for lack of a better word) and the background becoming less blue at the edges. Great job on both of these, I can tell a lot of effort went into them! How long did these two take you to finish if you don’t mind me asking?
Pennywise took three weeks or so. Macho Man took a year. I work fast when not depressed.
No worries! There’s no time limit on art, only draw/make art when you feel like it!
I like the one with Cosmos!
Thanks so much! 😃 That one was a birthday gift drawing for a good friend of mine! It’s also the longest I’ve ever spent on a drawing! I started it either in late April or early May and didn’t get it finished until the end of June, right on time LMAO
Seaside, OR. 20 March ‘21.
I think this is the best picture I’ve ever captured. The reflection, the somberness, the portent, the symmetricality.
Love how the horizon perfectly lines up like that! The wet sand is almost like a mirror…wow! It also feels somewhat lonely because of the lack of people and the nearly overcast sky.
I’m a performance artist. My favorite act is a sideshow burlesque act inspired by Junji Ito
Nice! What would you say the pro’s and con’s of it are? I don’t know any performance artists personally but I’m interested.
Pros and cons of performing?
Pros: it’s a great creative outlet, you end up with a lot of cool props and clothes, you meet some fantastic people
Cons: it doesn’t make much money, you meet some assholes with inflated egoes, depending on what you do it’s very competitive
I specifically do circus sideshow, fire, and burlesque (Coney Island if you know of it), which has the additional pro of being really fun at parties and getting to play with dangerous objects, but has the con that there is a real risk of severe injury
No sword swallowing? Just kidding. I appreciate your bravery since you’re playing with fire, in this case a literal sense! What’s the best experience you’ve had?
I don’t sword swallower or fire breathe because they’re exceptionally dangerous, speaking as a fire performance veteran
The absolute best thing about it is the community. It’s an international community, but everyone treats each other like family. It’s coming in clutch right now that I’m moving internationally.
