Nuki News #40: Design Practice

I’ve been going through a tutorial on Ctrl Paint about Design Basics.

https://ctrlpaint.myshopify.com/collections/design/products/design-basics-2-shape

Although I’ve been drawing for 10 years, ‘design’ often eluded me. I went to college for design(Websites &  graphic design for logos/posters) and while it introduced me to the basics, it didn’t click with me on how exactly to bridge it to my art itself. It was mostly about handling text and grids and measurements, which I did get a lot out of and use for my commission sheets and announcement posts, as well as this Patreon I run.

Years back, I kinda just assumed ‘Design’ with art just fell into the ‘concept art’ realm and nothing much else. Costumes and creatures, objects. But in 2019, I took the liberty of redesigning my fursona Artie to what he is now, as well as his brother bear Monty. I wanna show you what they looked like before and after my redesign:

It’s totally fine to like certain aspects of the ‘before’ designs of these two or even prefer them over where I went with them now. But I ended up redesigning them because they..it didn’t feel like they said anything! They were from me and a form of my expression or desire in a character form, but, how they ended up looking was more subconscious happenstance. With the redesigns, I asked myself questions! “Who are they? What do they like to do? Why is that?” And I feel the redesigns are much stronger and truer to my desired vision for them. I found making deliberate actions and choices helped me refine these two! I wager a lot of furries in the community could benefit from doing something like this. And sometimes it’s much more gradual. Artie went through quite a few subtle changes as I settled into my art style over time, for instance.

I enjoyed the results of this deliberate approach so much though that I realize this may be what I’ve been missing in my art- iteration and clarity. And that’s where this previously-mentioned tutorial has helped, by showing me a great method of exercising that muscle needed for design- and I recommend it to help with your drawing skills too! Basically, you take a photo of an animal, and draw what you see. Then you draw it again- and again, and again! Pushing an aspect of the animal each time. You can try to fatten the animal up, or chibi-fy them, or stretch ‘em. Or simply try to draw the animal with less lines than last time. This iterative process gets your brain thinking more creatively.

I think an unsung benefit too, is that with design, it’s based on decisions! Not your rudimentary skills as much. Anyone can make decisions! Like I learned with Competitive Pokemon last year, we don’t make ‘mistakes’ or suck, we just make ineffective decisions- and those can easily be changed! This also solved a mystery for younger-me, when I saw other artists who may not have the technical drawing/painting skills I have, but had a much stronger and defined style. They are making decisions on how to go about drawing things and how they decide to depict their world.

This is applicable to anything- fighting games, drawing, cooking, whatever! It’s not to say skill doesn’t matter, but skill is built up over time and I feel is the 20% to a decision’s 80% when it comes to execution. This is why even artists lacking in skill can end up getting a lot of traction in social media too, come to think of it- the ideas they have resonate with others such that they find it valuable to follow and share. Whereas there are times where a very skilled artist just paints a portrait and it gets very little traction, because it doesn't say or do anything meaningful to others.