HEY, YOU! Yeah, you, amateur artist! Have you ever seen a digital artist with really good fucking colours and wondered "HOW DID THEY GET THOSE REALLY GOOD FUCKING COLOURS?!" Is it experience, talent, and an eye for colour? FUCK NO. I'm here to tell you what the pros don't want you to know, which is that right within your very art program (assuming you're using Clip Studio Paint) is a single button that will MAKE YOUR ART GOOD*
* or like, marginally better than it was before most of the time
Let me show you how I took this BORING, UNGOOD Slime Rancher painting I did as a final project for my traditional art course from BORING...
TO RAD AS FUCK
THIS IS IT. THIS IS THE BUTTON.
You'll have to put everything on the same layer (I recommend putting it in a folder, duplicating the folder, and then collapsing all the duplicate layers together so your original work is still untouched), but after that, you can open the Gradient Map menu and go hog fucking wild.
This is what you're gonna see:
Basically, what gradient maps do is they map the darkest colour in your piece to the darkest colour in a gradient, and the lightest to the lightest, and then VOILA. All of your colours have been changed to the colours of the gradient. Neat!
You can use this to do things like automatically change skin tones or hair colours, or in our case, colour the whole painting!
You can download sets off the asset store and load them into your program by selecting the wrench icon and picking "Add gradient set."
All you need to do is load a gradient in the tool and voila...
...okay actually that looks like shit. (The gradient I'm using is #11 from the Yunywave set on the asset store! Go download it! It's a good set!)
So, our solution here is going to be different depending on the goal, the gradient, and whether it's a colour piece you're trying to zhuzh up or a B&W piece like this.
For this one, I duplicated the original layer and set the second one to Overlay at 100% opacity, then applied the gradient map to it.
INCREDIBLE! PERFECT!
Here are some other examples of how I've used gradient maps...
See, Overlay is a really good blending mode to use for this kind of thing, especially if you painted it with "normal" colours and just want to give it a little kick! But you should experiment with other modes, too. For a pastel piece, try Screen. For a subtle change, try Soft Light. For a moody or dark piece, try Multiply.
And you can also add even more details over the gradient layer to add that extra punch to it! In the example painting, I wasn't happy with the foreground tree's highlight being so dark, so I painted over it with an orange colour picked from the background, duplicated it, recoloured it to a dull yellow, and set the layer to 60% Glow Dodge.
Digital art gives us so many tools to make SICK FUCKING ART with, and gradient maps are like, the most powerful tools of all! USE THE SHIT OUT OF THEM AND GO MAKE COOL STUFF!
if you hear yapping when you knock on my door thats the dogs. they're all little chihuahua mixes. now if you hear yipping thats the kobolds. important distinction
you ever see something and think "wow that community is so cool" and then you remember that you're literally part of it
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utter bullshit that we stop growing at a certain age.
humans should grow (both taller and wider) at a continuous rate throughout our lifespans. i want to be 80 years old with the proportions of an average human being except i am the height of a multistory building. that would be so fun. that would require so much societal rearrangement. this isn't a want it's a need
So, you're worldbuilding a scifi alien species or a fantasy race that can reproduce as both male and female. Or you're a biologist or science educator. And you want what you're writing/making to be inclusive to intersex people.
The term hermaphrodite in biology refers to species that can reproduce as both male or female. The problem is it's also a slur when used against intersex people (it's also incorrect - we're not hermaphrodites). I recently polled other intersex folks informally and a plurality were fine with the h-word being used with the correct meaning in appropriate contexts. But the qualitative feedback I got was, all things equal, most people who wrote to me said they'd just be happier seeing the term less.
So here is a glossary of words you can use to talk about the biology of sex without invoking the h-word:
Gonochoric species where individuals (typically) reproduce only as either male or female. This means the species produces two types of gametes that have different sizes, and conventionally the larger is female. Gono- for generation/reproduction and -choric for separated/distinct. Note that "non-gonochoric" includes both hermaphroditic species and those that can reproduce asexually (e.g. parthenogenesis).
Gonosyne: species where individuals (typically) can reproduce as both male or female. Gono- for generation/reproduction and syne for together/combined. This is a term I have coined to be an alternative to hermaphrodite.
Types of gonosyny: it's common to categorize different forms of gonosyny based on temporality and how many gonads an individual has.
Grouping by Temporality:
Cosex: species where individuals can reproduce as both male and female simultaneously. Alternative terms: cosexual, simultaneous hermaphrodism. For example: land snails/slugs typically mate by linking up both pairs of genitals.
Dichosex: gonosynic species where individuals reproduce as male and female at different times in their lives. Protandrous species start as male then switch to female; protogynous start female then switch to male. Some species cycle between the two (serial/bidirectional hermaphrodism/disexuality). Alternative terms: dichosexual, dichogamous, sequential hermaphrodism. I coined this one after feedback that "dichogamous" was not intuitive to non-botanists, keeping dicho- (in two parts/paired) for simplicity. Example animal: clownfish (the Finding Nemo fish).
Grouping by Gonads:
Digonic: species that can reproduce as both male and female because they have separate male and female gonads. Digony can be cosex or dichosex. In botany the term monoecious is used for flowering plants. For example: barnacles have their ovaries in the base of their body, and testes in the back of their head.
Syngonic: species that can reproduce as both male and female, because their gonads can produce both male and female gametes. Alternative terms: syncoecious, monoclinous, ambisexual. (Note ambisexual has other meanings.) Syngony can be cosex or dichosex. In dichosexual species the gonad changes which gametes it produces when the individual changes sex. For example: land slugs have a single gonad (ovotestis).
Together this makes four categories. Examples come from: Sex change in plants and animals: a unified perspective.
Syngonic cosexual. Simultaneous gonosyny within the same flower/gonad. Examples: Black-jack daisy, Lady of the Night cactus; mangrove killifish, stubby-root nematode.
Syngonic dichosexual. Non-simultaneous gonosyny within the same flower/gonad. Examples: Bromelia chrysantha, grape ivy; California sheephead fish, common limpet.
Digonic cosexual. Simultaneous gonosyny from different flowers/gonads. Examples: bitter melon, jaraguá grass; barnacles, flatworms.
Digonic dichosexual. Non-simultaneous gonosyny from different flowers/gonads. Examples: papaya, catsfoot; staghorn coral, earthworm.
Hope this is helpful! I have two little notes I want to add on: Note on "non-gonochoric": it's possible this could also include isogamous speries? There's some ambiguity in use. Isogamy refers to sexual reproduction where you don't have two different sized gametes - instead it's two identically sized gametes that are getting combined. This is the standard amongst unicellular eukaryotes and very common in fungi.
Note on ambisexual: this is the term that Ursula K LeGuin used for the dichosexual aliens in the Left Hand of Darkness. The term in biology these days refers to undifferentiated (immature) tissue that has yet to develop into a given sex - e.g. a human embryo has ambisexual gonads until sexual differentiation later on in development. The term ambisexual has a ton of other meanings in other contexts such as a sexual orientation. For this reason I'd personally avoid it.
I hate Gandalf big naturals because he deserves wrinkly, saggy, old person boobs.
...save for those with which we partner.
cool. real cool. fuck this. tomorrow i am going to nightshade all of my art (and Glaze it too) and replace every single image on my blog with those versions of it. i might not even opt out just to poison the AI well more (should be opt-in anyway, pricks).
fuck you all. in fact, i might just delete my art sideblog. i'm not gonna post any new art at all actually. I'll pivot to other sites for that. thanks for making this place even more of an uphill battle to have fun and share things on.
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surprise!!!
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tag an artist save a life etc
they/them | adult | Minors DNI | one million fireballs breath attack | kill all ai scrapers | staff can take one penny off of my cold dead hands
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