Resource Roundup January Blues – The Art Squirrel

Another resource roundup post of random yet interconnected things in the world of digital art.

Digital Painting

Ramon Miranda is working on another set of brushes over at the Krita Artists forum. This time he is doing a coloured pencil variant for the pencil sketching brushes he made last year. I tried them out by drawing (guess what?) a squirrel and I think they are pretty good. The behave very like coloured pencils but in digital form.

You can test them out and give him feedback on the forum.

David Revoy has made another set of brushes and let people use them for free.

Proko has a great guide on how to make your digital art look more traditional. This is not a new guide but it is very useful to anyone interested in the subject of using traditional art knowledge in digital form.

There is an interesting web based demo for a fluid paint simulation called Fatty Fluid Sandbox. This is developed by Timur Baysal (Taron) who also works on an experimental painting software called Verve Painter.

Another cool tip I found for digital painting in Krita was made last year by Wojtek Trybus.

3D

I found out about a new website for making 3D designs including AV/VR, games, web, apps and ads and banners called PixCap recently. I haven’t tried it yet, but it also has a rigging and animation tool built in which caught my attention so maybe I’ll give that a go at some point.

Icon Clothed Human Digitization is a demo for turning single 2D images of people into 3D models.

I found the Blender Smoothie 3D YouTube channel which has some interesting videos for Blender users.

AI Art Generation

This is a touchy subject so I have been avoiding writing about it on the blog because quite frankly I’m a shy and reserved no drama sort of person. That said, I’m currently more interested in 3D sculpting and drawing anyway and also I don’t really have a use for it personally unless I could use it with my own images somehow. I want to wait to see what happens regarding the copyright and ethics but I think it would be strange if I didn’t mention it or have a passing interest in it as someone who has been doing digital art in some form since a child (Degas Elite). I thought it would be hypocritical of me not to talk about it given that I have looked into some “AI” tools on this blog before, albeit none of the current image generation ones.

Things are progressing rather fast with the technology and I’ve seen a few artists and game developers express an interest in using it as a concept art tool as part of a process. I’ve also seen them get shut down in real time on twitter which is pretty frustrating as I think an open discussion rather than a toxic bullying atmosphere is more constructive for everyone.

I try to be unbiased about things on this blog and I like to keep an open mind and I also like to try different digital art technology. I have been educating myself about the subject over the last few weeks and I suggest whether you are for or against the technology it is worth learning about it. There are countless resources for doing so which are all over the internet.

There is a class action lawsuit which was started by some artists against stability AI, DeviantArt and Midjourney that is worth knowing about. I think everyone needs to be able to get their points across on both sides. Hopefully the big corporations don’t end up owning everyone and censoring all creative expression or something.

I also found a good long article about the subject of technology and art changing, written by Aaron Hertzmann: When Machines Change Art. Just as a side note, AI art did not just spring up out of nowhere, it has been developed over many years. It is a pretty interesting subject albeit a controversial one.

One channel I’ve been looking at to learn about what AI art generation is capable of is Olivia Sarikas who talks about the new technology and he has also made a video about the lawsuit which I think is pretty well done and unbiased and fair out of many I have watched so far. I think he also recommends people to watch one Pro did recently.

Thanks for reading.