Warriors Wiki:Charart/Apprentice Tutorials

List of Charart Tutorials:

FirePelt's Tutorial {C}Frostheart's Tutorial

Icestorm's Tutorial {C}Icethroat's Tutorial

Insane's Video Tutorials And How to use GIMP {C}Ivystripe's tutorial and help for new users

Mintstar's Tutorial {C}Misty's Tutorial

Mousetalon's Tutorial {C}Nightshine's Tutorial

Oblivion's Tutorial

Charart Tutorial

First and Foremost
Everyone always asks how to become a warrior; well, here it is:
 * Users join as an apprentice.
 * Apprentices ask questions if need be from experienced users. Before an apprentice puts art up, they should get basic guidelines from one of the tutorials listed below; i.e: art program, shading style, basic instructions etc.
 * Journey from apprentice to warrior.
 * Have to have more than one image approved and be nominated.
 * Know how to use shading, highlights, blur, etc.
 * Be able to put in good critiquable comments to others' images.

Tools
Tools for Gimp:



Tools for Pixlr:



(OA was Icethroat)

Ears & Eyes
For a good looking ear pink choose the colours like this~



And for pupil placement and shading in the eye~



Black
- Fill it in with the paint bucket (GIMP) with a dark gray color.

- Make a new layer. Name it "Shading" and with a size 9 black brush, add the various shading areas in.

- Blur by going to "Gaussian Blur" and blur it at any rate between 15.0 and 40.0.

- This is optional. Create a new layer and with white, dot areas that you'd have highlights on.

- Now, blur it with the same rate you blurred your shading at. Change the layer mode to multiply.

- Make a new layer. This is for the ear pink. With the path tool, make a triangle. Press enter on your keyboard, then fill it in. Then, press Ctrl + Shift + A. Blur your ear pink.

- Eyes now. Go on the background layer and put in four pixels. I used blue. For the eye color, I usually put one lighter pixel at the top on the left side, underneath it with a tad darker color, then a really darker color. Then I put two pixels for the pupil and white.

- On the background layer fill it in with a color you haven't used in your charart before. Then color select it and press delete on your keyboard on every layer. You now have a clean picture, ready to be put for approval. 03:12, September 11, 2011 (UTC)

White
Free game

Dual Coloured
Scarletwind

Wavy
There are many ways to do tabby cats. I'm going to start of using my favorite style, wavy, and then I'll post more.

I didn't explain this in my other tutorial, but I guess I'll do it now. I open my blank and then change the mode to RBG. (Image > Mode >RBG). Then, I use color select and select the white. I press delete on my keyboard and create a new layer, and name it base. I fill in the base layer with my chosen color - for this, I have chosen ginger.

- Right. So with the pencil tool, I add in stripes. As you notice, there's some circles outside the lineart. That's because I connect the stripes - I find it easier to do that than color it in with the pencil tool. And look at the stripe on the paw. You'll see that there isn't a circle. Why? Because it collides with other stripes. So I just color in the end and fill it in with the paint bucket. Then, I went to Gaussian Blur and blurred it with a rate of 2.0. As you can see, most stripes are wavy. That's how the pattern got its name.

- For the heck of it, I added a white muzzle and belly, this teaches some basic lessons with the smudge tool. It's your best friend with bi colored cats.

- Shading time. Right, so a heads up - this cat will have scars and a nicked ear. For the shading (ginger cats) I do a dark red. For brown cats, I usually do a darker brown and for tabby cats with gray and brown I usually do black. For white cats I do grey and for black I do black. As you can see, the shading's not one color. For the white parts I used a pale gray. Make sure it doesn't blur into the ginger.

- Blur! I didn't like the way the stripes showed up at first when I blurred, so I went on the stripes layer and with the burn/dodge tool (set on dodge, midtones, 100%), I lightened the stripes and lightened the paw part of the shading and the midriff part (a strip of shading that is connected to the haunch and the back). You can see the paws look a bit red - because that's pretty much his name. Flamefoot. xD I didn't change that because that's what made him unique.

- Highlights. Added them and blurred. For this, I set the layer mode on overlay and lowered the opacity of the layer.

- Added ear-pink, eye color, and cleared the waste. Hurrah! This is your final product. Say hi to Flamefoot, a ginger tom with a white belly and paws the color of flame. 23:52, September 14, 2011 (UTC)

Thin Tabbies
Welcome to my tutorial on how to make my favorite kind of tabby, the thin tabby! Before you do anything, open your blank and color select and delete the white. Make a new layer named "base", put it behind you background, and do the following.

I'm going to do a brown tabby, do I filled in the blank with brown. Make sure the whole cat is covered, then make a new layer- "stripes."

Put your brush on the smallest (make sure the scale is on 1.00) and just make some lines. Connect them, and stretch them across the blank. Go wild if you want to! Don't leave huge, obvious gaps in between the lines though.

Go to filters>blur>gaussian blur. Don't leave the blur on rate 50 if you don't want them too blurry. Here, it's shone at rate 17 I believe. Add a new layer, "shading." Go back to your base layer and get the color you used using the color picker tool. Go back to your shading layer, and make your color darker then the base. Pick any pencil brush and fill in the appropriate shading areas.

Raise the blur rate a little higher, then gaussian blur a few times. Change the layer mode to "multiply" instead of "normal". Lower the opacity to your liking. If you are doing highlights, which I will only do for this tutorial (since I can't stand highlights), make a new layer saying "highlights."

Make the color white and color where ever you want highlights. I would advise them on the haunch, chest, tail and face. When you gaussian blur, blur it a couple times to get it nice and spread out.

Change the mode just like you did for your shading to "overlay" and lower the opacity to your liking. Make a new layer labeled "earpink."

Find your color of earpink and draw a neat triangle, parallel to all sides of the ears. Blur it with the tool that looks like a little drop, not gaussian blur. Swipe over it a few times. Return to your original lineart layer and do your eye. Here's how I do mine: Pick your color and do three pixels in the back. Change your color to black and do the front pixel. Place the white pixel in the place that wasn't colored. Go back and color select your base eye color, and make it darker and place that color in the corner.

Fill in your charart with a neon or color you have not used like shown. Color select it and go on every layer (including earpink, you never know) and delete. This gets rid of your outer colors and waste.

And there's your thin warrior! It would be much better in my opinion, without the highlights. But hey, in the tutorial, you gotta use 'em. So, thanks for your time! 20:13, October 28, 2011 (UTC)

Tortoiseshells
Here is how i make my torties:

First colour pick the line art and put it on a new layer and colour in the background with the dark base colour, usually black or dark brown

Then add another layer and add splashes of a lighter colour, usually a shade of ginger and smudge with circle brush 3 at a rate of 60, and then blur at a rate of 25-30

You can repeat step 2 for every colour you want, but adding more than 3 usually looks too busy, so try to stick with 2-3 different colours.

Then add another layer for shading. I use solid black, but any dark colour would work. Just paint it where the shading would go, erase where the highlights would be, and blur really well.

Then lower the layer’s transparency until you have a nice balance between shading and coat colour. I set it to 39

Then add one more layer for the ear pink and eye colour

Now the most important step, go to the line art layer and select outside the line art (using fuzzy select). Then go through all the layers hitting Crtl+X and that will get rid of all the waste on the outside.

And there's your finished tortoishell. I would probably be told to lighten the shading, but I'm partial to dark shading so it looked fine to me. There's lots of different kinds of tortieshells, like a dark one like Redtail, tortieshell and white like Cherrytail and calico like Poppyfrost.

Mottled & Flecked
Icestorm

Abnormal Lineart
Here is some ways to change up the lineart to match the character decription better. A few things to make sure of:
 * Make the new lineart thick
 * Check the box that says "Hard Edge" when erasing to make sure you get it all
 * Double check to make sure there's no waste

Chances are this is the only type of lineart change you will need to make. Its simple. Just erase the ears tip and draw in the new gap using true black. Some good examples are Lionheart, Yellowfang and Bluestar. Another likely lineart change is patchy fur. You can see some examples on Dappletail and Stoneteller, or for really patchy fur, Running Horse Pretty much the same steps as the torn ear. All lineart changes are basically the same. Erase, redraw, fiddle with it, put it for approval. Easy peasy. Heres some more abnormalities: Stumpy tails like Halftail and my favorite, Berrynose



Ragged fur like Silverhawk and Raggedstar



Twisted feet like Oddfoot and Cinderpelt



Tuffed ears like Redtail and Tawnyspots



A crooked jaw like Crookedstar



=Layers= ''These are how I use layers. Feel free to add in other methods.''
 * Layers are such an invaluable tool for me. You don't have to worry about blurring the lineart, and it makes charart creation so much easier. I typically use three layers in GIMP.


 * Eye: Pretty self-explanatory. Make all pixilations of the eye in this top layer.
 * 1) Lineart: The lineart. Unless the character has a physical flaw that you need to work into the lineart, this layer should remain untouched.
 * 2) Color: Add all color other than eye color here. Add all your shaeding and highlights here.


 * To add in layers, click the button I've circled in purple. A box will pop up with information in it. For our purposes, just change the name if you want and ignore everything else.


 * To change a layer's name, double click its name in the layer box you see above.


 * There's undoubtedly more to layers than this, but this is really all you need to know to use layers in charart making. 14:01, October 31, 2011 (UTC)

=Shading Styles= Free game add in every way you know  =Videos= Here are some videos where you can see how its done

OAs for these were Nightshine & Insaneular-

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460pxpx|left|Ivystripe's video tutorial