A turning point

Today I got home and realised that I am not happy with how my characters have turned out at all. I know I can do so much better, but not being able to afford programs like Photoshop that I can use at home is stopping me from doing better.

I thought that I was going to have to hand in a project where I wasn't happy with the outcome. I thought I had tried all free art software and to be honest none of them have exactly what I need. That is until, I was scrolling through my instrgram and saw a piece of artwork that was made in Autodesk Sketchbook. I have Autodesk 3ds max and maya which I've been trying out in my spare time but I'd never heard of Autodesk Sketchbook so I decided to look it up. To my delight it was free so I instantly downloaded it.

Looking more into their website I saw that they had loads of helpful tutorials and lots of free brush sets, which seemed like a big bonus.

I will be honest and say that I am still new to digital art. I am used to drawing traditionally with pencil and paper, which is why I created my characters that way. First drawing them on paper, then scanning them in to Illustrator where I'd outline and colour them in.

I figured I was going to need help getting started so I found this tutorial on how to draw a face in Sketchbook.

https://www.sketchbook.com/blog/how-to-draw-faces-tutorial-pdf-download/

I decided I was going to use this tutorial to redraw one of my characters faces, so I chose Avicia the warrior, as her skin tone was similar to the example that was in the tutorial and I wanted to make the most out of it.

I followed the tutorial step by step, and found that the program was really easy to use and had lots of brushes, blending modes, and pretty much everything I needed.

I was super happy with the end result. It looks so much better than what I created in Illustrator and I wish i discovered this program sooner.

After successfully redrawing Avicia's face, I decided I wanted to move on to redrawing all my characters faces, which is what I will be doing tomorrow.

I feel like this is going somewhere good.

I also decided to redraw my map in Autodesk Sketchbook, which I am also a lot happier with now.

I'm really going to try hard to get my work to the level I know I can do.