Cesar’s Stickmaking Tutorial!
Yes, I made a tutorial. I never made one, so this is my first. Please tell me if it’s good :D
In this tutorial I will show you how to make certain things in pivot (lol, I already sound professional).
This tutorial is mostly for beginners, but higher ranks could learn from it too.
Well, let’s start.
Index:
Chapter one: Making Round Shapes
Chapter two: Making Spikes
Chapter three: My opinions and tips
Chapter four: Extra information
Chapter one: Making Round shapes
I see a lot of people with a horrible blockiness problem, I hate blockiness.
IMO, round shapes aren’t really that hard, just stick more segments into it. It takes a few more minutes of your life, but oh well…
I always do it by hand, but the tutorial wouldn’t be so interesting if I just said “Do it by hand.” So I thought of a handy little trick that helps you making the round shape you want.
So, imagine, you want this (picture below) made in pivot.
(I drew this picture in flash)
No, I do not know WHY you would want that, It’s just an example.
But allright, here is the first step
Step 1:
Make three circles above each other.
Make one, and the duplicate it two times.
This is what you get:
Step 2:
Now we will add the lines, because we do not want a whole circle.
I made the circles with thickness 4, but it doesn’t matter with what thickness you did it, the only important thing is: the lines we are going to add now have to be the same thickness. So my lines have to be thickness 4.
so grab the origin, and start adding lines. Stay on the line of the circle. When you've done a little part, add a segment on a random place and hold it and look if the circle hasn't got any thicker than it was. Now keep doing that until you got a half circle.
Warning: Do *not* attach the lines to the circle segments, because then you won’t be able to remove them.
eventually, you will get this:
when you're done, add it to the animation, move the circle away, click on next frame and then on play and look if you got a nice circle.
mmyes?
Step 3:
pretty much same as above, but now in the other direction. and for the bottom part of this line, just let the line flow into the next circle.
So after you spent a minute of your life:
and that's it.
Step 4:
Step 4 is really easy, you just have to duplicate the lines from the bottom circle
Warning though: You *have* to start from the joint of the 2nd and 3rd circle.
This one:
(the one that connect the two upper circles)
Warning about the Warning: Make sure you added a segment exactly over that joint, do NOT add the upper lines to the circle segments.
Now you only have to delete the circle segments,
And then you're done!
Notes about Chapter 1:
This example was pretty simple, but you can add the technique in every kind of stick. For example helmets.
Because, ofcourse, you don't have to make half a circle, but you can do a part too.
Watch out for the warnings though, test everything immediatly after you did the part with a warning.
And here's a tip to make adding the lines easier. I always make a short line, and then duplicate 20 of them into a long line, then I turn on edit mode and start pulling them into the right spots. It's easier than just doing it segment by segment IMO.
Chapter two: Making Spikes
I like spikes :)
I use them a lot, really a lot.
spikes are great.
But again, I see much beginners just making spikes out of 2 or 3 segment, or making spikes with thickness 12.
So here I will teach you on how to make spikes.
You can make spikes in many different ways, I will do 1 type here, the one I use the most.
now let us imagine again. You want a curved spike added onto this leg:
and here's how you do it.
Step 1:
first, we make a segment going to the edge of the leg, so we can make the spike there.
Step 2:
Now, we make an outline for the spike, with thickness 2.
Make the outline a bit cirved up. (you can use the thing in chapter one, but it's a bit hard since this is small.)
so make your outline, and you will get to something like this:
Step 3:
Fill it up.
I recommend filling the thick part of the spikes with big segments.
And for the part near the point, just pull segments out of the point until the bit is filled.
Step 4:
Now the spike in Step 3 doesn't really look nice, and most people will probably say it's bad.
that's becaus it's not sharp. So we're gonna add a finishing touch.
add a little line of thickness 1 to the point like this.
And then you're done!
Notes about Chapter two:
Again, This example was pretty simple, but you can add the technique in every kind of stick, like hair, armour, swords, backgrounds or whatever you want.
Make sure you did the fills right though, I always get a lot of holes, and that's really annoying.
Chapter three: My opinions and tips
hmm....well, I was gonna write a whole story about transparent windows, and that I hate it (lol, I don't even know how to use it o.o) But I'm not going to, because then my thread will turn into a flame war and eventually get locked.
So the only tip/opinion I can give is about fullbody's.
Personally, I hate fullbody's that have a stick for every different clothing piece or accesoire.
Those fullbodys excist out of thousands of sticks. one for the leg decoration, onne for the chest decoration, and they're all the same color!!!!
So here's a tip: try to make every color one stick, It will be much easier to animate with.
here's an example of what I did with my Vegeta stick.
The chest decoration and the gloves were the same color, so I kept them together.
Chapter four: Extra information
I made this tutorial pretty quick, and I didn't have much ideas so I only had two real chapters.
So I think I'll be adding more chapters later, and some tips and opinions when they pop up.
but you can Suggest chapters too.
Thanks for reading, now please say how I did my first tutorial :3
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