Welcome to /dw/. The large number of new visitors has encouraged me to create this introductory sticky. We will discuss what this board is, what drawhoring is, why you suck at it, and how you can get better.
Once upon a time (2006), there was a group of people (all one person) on 4chan's /b/ who were affectionately known as "drawhores." They were imageboard entertainers armed with little more than MSPaint and wit. Originally, they stayed in /b/ or lurked in the shadows. Over time, however, they collected each other outside of their original home. As /b/ turned to shit, they slowly stopped catering to their audience and, instead, stuck together and amused themselves. Over the years, they either created or simply stumbled upon places to stay for their own amusement or as a type of drawhore quarantine, each one more public than the last. Plus4chan's /dw/ is the latest of these websites where new scribbles can circlejerk under the supervision of the old drawhores of yesteryear that are masochistic enough to stick around and watch.
Drawhoring is an easy subject, yet many of you find yourselves failing the class. If you take a look at your syllabus, it should explain that drawhoring, in the simplest sense, is using illustrations to entertain an audience in an imageboard setting. In the end, good drawhores utilize this imagery as a tool to facilitate and enhance the entertainment. While common, the use of a unique "character" is not required. It is not about the character or the name. It is not about roleplay. It is about the content and how it affects the audience. You are not your character. Your character is nothing more than your puppet.
Uh oh! You're failing your classes! Let's take a moment to review the notes on your report card to see where drawhores commonly go wrong. • Lack of expression Appropriate expression is one of the most important artistic elements when interacting or setting a mood. Do not be afraid to exaggerate. Expressions require more than a pair of eyebrows. Use all of the face. Actually, use the entire body. Skillful body language is more powerful than you would think. More often than not, good expressions can be comedic on their own. • Useless filler/dialogue This isn't a chatroom. Your audience does not want to hear "hay guise whats up lol." Nobody cares for your opinion that you feel the need to interject into the thread. You will look like you don't know what you are doing, and that's because it's true. If you are going to do something, do it. Don't stand around and wait for something to happen. If your post contributes nothing, then don't post. It's that simple. • Talking head Again, this isn't a chatroom. If you sit around and converse while not doing anything, you become a talking head. If you are just there to run your mouth, why are you posting an image and pretending to be a drawhore? • Templating Some of you are so incredibly slow or lazy that you cannot be a drawhore without reusing the same edited image over and over. This is amazing since many of you have terrible stick figures that take no more than 10 seconds to draw. It's an eyesore, and you've managed to place yourself lower than a talking head. • Avatar If you manage to possess more than one or two of the above traits, you are probably an avatar. Not only do you try to make your posts unique with a name and tripcode, but you garnish every post with an attention-grabbing image in an attempt to become internet famous or something. Go back to Gaia. No, seriously, that site was built for this exact purpose. • Interrupting threads When you see a drawhore thread, this is not an invitation for you to jump in and shit all over it. Riding on the coattails of others is frowned upon. Occasionally, they ask for it, but only contribute if you can actually, you know, contribute, instead of just stealing the spotlight. Crowded circlejerk threads go nowhere. • Bad art Don't let this discourage you if you are not the best artist. Contrary to popular belief, drawing ability isn't always the most important part of drawhoring. The point is to be entertaining, and as long as your drawings are good enough to get an idea across, they should be fine. However, some of you are simply so bad that it is distracting. Basic drawing ability is a prerequisite. • Not entertaining This is what drawhoring is about. If you can't entertain, you can't drawhore. This isn't about you, or your character. This is about your audience. There are several ways to entertain, but many of you are not funny, sexy, or clever in any way. For others, these things come naturally, and the resulting threads are amusing for everyone. For those that do not naturally possess the ability to sprout golden moments with every image, it is possible to learn. This rarely happens. Not everyone is cut out for the job.
Now that you've made it this far, you can try to take the class again and prove that you can pass as a drawhore. It all boils down to entertainment. If you cannot follow the guidelines and be entertaining, this is where I tell you to stop. Stop posting. You are contributing nothing to an already dying art. If you have any questions, feel free to ask in this thread. Good luck~ tl;dr: I MISS THE GOOD OLD DAYS.
I can't sign up for college classes; I haven't finished lower school yet.
>>15420 >• Not entertaining >This is what drawhoring is about. If you can't entertain, you can't drawhore. This isn't about you, or your character. This is about your audience. Fuck, THAT'S where I've been going wrong. Wonder how many people here take up drawhoring and turn their scribbles into a godmode character?
>Avatar Fuck, I think you got me. Well on +/dw/ at least. I did do that Fasci thing which I hope starts back up but other then that most of the time I'm just avataring it up. Not that i don't TRY and be funny, it just doesn't work out lol. I pander to my audience on /r9k/ by doing request threads. AM I A DRAWHORE?
does +/dw/ really count as a drawhoring environment? I was under the influence that it was just us, no real audience to entertain.
>>15547 It's less of a drawhoring environment, per se, than a drawhore lounge for fellow fags to socialise, swap tips and practice their acts.
>• Not entertaining >This is what drawhoring is about. If you can't entertain, you can't drawhore. This isn't about you, or your character. This is about your audience. Well, I 've been failing since day one. I guess I just don't have a shtick. I need something unique about myself , maybe then I could entertain.
Suggestion for new nigs try pirating something like Flash or Paint tool Sai if you don't have them already. If you're kind of a shitty artist (me) the slight stylization that those programs offer make you look a little better
Yeah, flash gives you really smooth lines. See?
(USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)
>>15761 Oh Magpie, you silly goose.
>>15581 Already have pirated fotoshoop cs3, should probably pirate the cs4 now that it's out there.
>>15581 First I drew this picture with a mouse in ms paint and it turned out to be hideous! Luckily I installed Photoshop CS and drew it again with a tablet, now it's ten times better!
>>15827 Well played.
>>15827 spoilers; this is for newfags with little to no artistic skill
>>15846 That doesn't make sense. No software or hardware can ever improve your artistic talent you card. Only practice. Posting on the internet is not practice, it's posting "work in progress" drawings.
>>15849 it doesn't improve anything, it just gives the illusion of stylization. Makes it look cell-shaded almost.
>>15888 >it doesn't improve anything Yeah exactly. >it just gives the illusion of stylization So you're telling people to live under the illusion that they can draw with good programs even when they obviously can't? You're just provoking foolish behaviour. You are not helping Boros. You are not helping at all. Thanks for contributing though!
>>15895 To some artists, like myself, I find that programs like Sai tend to "feel" a lot better than that of programs like Photoshop.
>>15827 But the first picture was done with a tablet...it has varying line thickness. So it wasn't done in MS Paint. :/
>>16156 ava does that a lot, and i do it too, you make a 0pt line drawing and do 1pt lines in places to thicken them. L2pchat and mspaint
>>16156 >But the first picture was done with a tablet...it has varying line thickness. So it wasn't done in MS Paint. I wasn't lying. My work here is done.
>>16156 Here, I'll draw you a picture in MSPaint with varying line thickness, for the sake of style. WATCH ME WORK. Bitches don't know about my DOUBLE CURVE TOOL.
SEE?!
>>16156 Eraser can be used to 'trim' the fat off the ends of lines to give varying line thickness. People have been doing this with the mouse since MSpaint was created. While a graphics tablet won't make you a better artist, it can remove one of the hurdles between you and your images. these hurdles can be overcome the hard way, with techniques such as the one i described, but tablets are a faster way to get past the problem. TL;DR tools and techniques help you overcome obstacles, but doing a bit of studying on how to draw is still the foundation of actually drawing. Just keep practicing and learning and you should get better and hopefully have fun.
>>16341 Here's a very garbled picture that shows a few techniques you can do using the eraser. If you RIGHT CLICK with the eraser, you erase ONLY the color in your foreground... and it doesn't actually erase, but rather paints over those colors with whatever is in your background. AS YOU CAN SEE if you pay attention, I changed green to pink, and I erased only a specific color. In other words... Erase your sketch lines by sketching in a different color, like Blue or something.
>>16363 I did not know paint had mask settings, thanks. Now my amateurish squiggles will looks slightly less amateurish
Microsoft Paint is the kind of friend everyone else sees as a loser, and only you see how cool of a bro MSPaint actually is.
All this MS paint love makes me feel sad that I'm on a mac with cs4 everything drawing with a tablet. You MS PAINT guys are better artists by FAR lol
>>16391 Yeah, a while back I got pretty hardcore nostalgic for MSPaint too, I used to doodle in it all the time before I got my Mac. Enter Paintbrush. http://paintbrush.sourceforge.net/ It's pretty close to Paint. It was fun for a little while, before I realized I didn't draw in solid shapes anymore and went "FFFFFFFFF THIS TAKES FOREVER TO FIIILLL." Would've gone more detailed, but got hungry. I still like the crispness of the program.
Paint.NET is pretty good, at least it works for me. It's just like a moderately more advanced version of MSPaint. It works for photos too. It doesn't have that clusterfuck of effects and tools that you'll never use (not pointing any fingers, photoshop).
>>16390 HEY RICK!
>>15417 i just sawe this video, i think you all should too!! pretty funny. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfsEC8-DcgY
>>17211 Sup MSPaint~
>>17292 Why do you talk to MSPaint? I see him as such a loser.
>>15417 i just saw the best powerslide ever!!!
>>16390 MSPaint is awesome, if you know how to use it. It's a lot like a Harmonica, if you're good you're awesome, but most people who use it make it seem horrible, mostly because using it takes a lot more skill then anyone would think
>>17686 With programs like MSPaint it requires a lot more patience and time to get a well polished product. That's why it's understandable when drawwhores are slow on the draw if they're spending more than a few minutes on their doodles. Personally, I need to slow down because even though I can pump out doodles quickly they're not at the level of quality I want them.
Scribble for OS X is what I use. Not technically free though. Pressure-sensitive, recognizes the eraser end of stylus, has layers, transparency, various brushes, and a really usable interface. Only thing it can't do is 1-bit Rick-style MS paint, ironically enough. http://www.atebits.com/scribbles/
This thread turned into image software discussion after twelve replies, good job. The truth is it doesn't matter. I thought we already had a thread for that.
>>18653 >The truth is it doesn't matter. Same could be said about the "rules of drawhoring", but that's just my opinion.
>>18892 >Nothing matters, but that's just my opinion. Whoop-de-doo, thank you for your contribution.
>rules of drawhoring Wait what. I think this thread was originally guidelines how to suck less if you start drawhoring and don't know what the hell is going on. Stating the obvious for new guys. I have no idea what this thread is about now.
>>18898 As long as everyone is having fun and making new friends, who cares? Whether they suck or not, everyone should be having a good time :3
>>18902 Of course :3 Too bad if people keep forcing their inane drawings for no reason except to "belong", contributing nothing and filling up the post limit is everybody else's loss~
OH BOY OH BOY. PEOPLE HAVE DISAGREEMENTS SO EVERYBODY IS WRONG ABOUT FUCKING EVERYTHING! I mean, I disagree with the thread topic and feel that this board/environment isn't about what "classic" drawhores do, rather, we are just an RP board with drawings, but I'm not jumping in and yelling that Ava's wrong. DEAR GOD. THIS FUCKING POSTS. >>18892 Shut up. I hate you. OH JEEZE SOMEBODY MADE ME FEEL BAD BY "PUTTING ME IN MY PLACE" WITH A BLANKET STATEMENT TO EVERYBODY TO REMIND THEM TO GET BACK ON TOPIC SO I'M GONNA SHOW HIM UP! OH BOY WILL I! I'LL SAY THE WHOLE THREAD WAS A BAD IDEA! You're a fucking retard. DID YOU KNOW THAT SOME OF THIS SHIT APPLIES TO REAL LIFE AND NOT JUST TO DRAWHORING?! AND IF YOU THINK I DON'T RECOGNIZE THE HYPOCRICY OF THE VERY POST I'M WRITING, YOU'RE WRONG! Pic related, it's me projecting my own frustrations onto you as though you're all actually this mad, which you're not.
>>18913 At first I thought this was Shiné overreacting as usual, but then I realized there was no accented e, and that this is someone making fun of the overreaction and then the levels of irony made it cool.
>>18944 the really ironic thing is that I posted it knowing you'd come to that conclusion. WHICH MAKES IT UNCOOL WHICH MAKES IT MORE IRONIC WHICH MAKES IT MORE COOL
>>19025 I think you're thinking about this too much.
>>19026 HOW IRONIC OF YOU TO SAY THAT!
I myself started using flash about half a year ago. You can get some really nice results, and if you're used to drawing with MS paint, expect to see immediate results when you start this sucker up. Oh, and there's a bit of a learning curve. Especially if you later on wish to make flashes. What am I doing here? I don't know.
This thread isn't for image software discussion and it never was. Stop it. Read the first five posts before you post. If you have any questions, feel free to ask in this thread.
>>20067 ... R-Right. My bad.
i'd like to talk about a few comedy basics. Hell, it comes down to storytelling basics really. All storytelling basically boils down to conflict. In order for conflict you need at least two opposing forces interacting. What constitutes as opposing forces in a storyline sense? two or more factions or individuals with differeing goals, or perhaps the same goals, but different methods of achieving them. Goals can be broken down into to main States: Change the Status Quo, or to Maintain it. A cop wants to maintain the status quo of a lawful society by maintaining the law. A criminal wants to upset the status quo by breaking the society's laws, either for his benefit or for (in his opinion) the betterment of the society. Here is a very basic conflict that could be a pure action story, a commentary on social inequality, a heist, or a farce, or any other number of things. Understanding the basics of story can help you understand the basics of comedy. Some of the most successful comedy still revolves around conflict of one person wanting to do or explain something, and another person or circumstances foiling the protagonist's attempt. The comedy is usually derived not from the protagonist's eventual success, but from his many failures. EFG is living proof that Failing is usually a lot funnier than Success. The point to this is probably that you should give your character something to struggle against; a personal flaw, circumstance, a Nemesis or Straight Man, even simple Confusion is a good foil.
Another invaluable resource i need to spend more time refreshing myself with is the good ol' PSG Tutorial. http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm This has some very good explainations of picture fundamentals. From light, to texture, to composition, to practicing techniques that page is a wealth of straightforward info designed to make you a better artist. http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/ other good stuff from the same source.
can this be unstickied yet? gettin' a little tired of seeing it every day.(USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)
>>21360 Use the ignore button.
Sticky thread was educational!View animation
This is a Kecleon. I'm tired of seeing Dr. @$$.
rage
sage(USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)
Saging Anon/OP, I have some gripes about this board.
>>23641 Please elaborate.
>>23642 There are too many oversensitive people here. It seems unbecoming of us.
>>23643 What.
>>23012 Domino, did you draw this? I thought you didn't draw porn.
>>23776 No.
>>23012 You're grounded
I think it's all just about having fun.
>>24485 That's a fine stance for you to take because being entertaining is intuitive for you.
>>24493 I don't know what you're trying to tell me. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Both the stance and the intuitive assumption?
>>24502 I'm saying that, even if you don't care for anything that this sticky says, it doesn't matter since you are generally entertaining anyway. Good thing.
>>24505 Thanks ^^
They were stubborn tonight, but perhaps something stirred. One spoke up for the class, said, "We cannot decide what manner of posts are most widely preferred by the horde in pits and the Gallery Guide. We're concerned popularity sways with the tide." The teacher stared grimly, instruction unheard, "You can't give away what you're missing inside. Be the line and the color, the wish, and the word." "But what line?" said a second. "Which wish?" said a third. Soon all were debating whether they had relied more on drawing or text, on what's smart or absurd. "Is the story the star, or along for the ride?" Their teacher stood, waiting, for the noise to subside. "It is what it is. Most great plans get deferred. Every audience dream and your own might collide. Be the line and the color, the wish, and the word." "We can't be ALL those things!" cried someone, undeterred "Prose and poetry might only flower inside some invention and wit-possessed seven-thumbed nerd who'll fail to draw faces till the day that he's died. What if wishes and words were completely denied of some whiz to whose perfect cartoons you've referred? Oh I'd give any treasure to hear you say I'd be the line and the color, the wish, AND the word." "Prince of Pupils, there's nothing I'd rather confide, but it's how to proceed, not a title assured. Never judge what you've made till the ink is all dried. Be the line and the color, the wish, and the word."
>>25316 ;_; (b;_;)b
ill never pass middle school at this rate
Wow, I wish I read this thing earlier. Changes must be made, then hopefully I'll start again in this more forgiving environment.
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