March 11th- Week 5 of SRP

Hi everyone,

I got back from New York this week on Monday (which was amazing), and I have been able to resume all of my work once more.

This week was my first time working with the Program called Flame Painter 3 Pro, which is an application unlike any I've ever seen before. Basically it works like Clip Studio Paint and Photoshop in that you work in layers, but Flame Painter is different in the sense that it's more of an add-on to these programs. You can't really create any artwork in Flame Painter, you can just greatly enhance existing artwork.

Most add on programs are simply for adding textures, or finer details into nearly finished artwork, but Flame Painter is completely different program in that all of the brushes it uses are constantly moving across the screen. The brushes in Flame Painter are like a trail of dots, and when you paint, those dots leave behind their color in a sort of ephemeral way, and when they cross paths, the colors lighten each other. In fact, they can be programmed to have a multitude of different properties, which makes Flame Painter amazing (and amazingly difficult) for creating special effects.

Take for instance one illustration which I plan to become an animation:

Now watch what happens after I enhance it with Flame Painter:

I'm not an expert at using the software, but it makes it possible to create stunning effects, and not just flames or explosions. I'm going to be using this software to make clothing, stars, etc. 

Since it is so hard to really explain the program, here's a link to the web site that gives a demo of it: 

http://www.escapemotions.com/experiments/flame/index.php

That's just a really basic demo of it, in the actual program there way more to it. And I have to say, while this seemed so exciting at first (because you're instantly able to make fire or whatever,) actually incorporating this into your artwork, morphing it into the shape you actually want, and creating the desired effect was almost impossible! I guess it can only get better with practice.

The work space in Flame painter looks like this:

This is a really basic overview, but you can see the layers Panel in the bottom right, above that are the brushes, and above that is the color/gradient that you can select for your brush. On the left is all of the brush settings, which can be seen better in this picture, along with some examples of the brushes that I work with:

Factors such as speed, chaos, noise, etc. all have to be controlled for when you want to use the brushes to your desired effect, which is what allows you to create all of the different shapes and effects seen above.

The reason why it's compatible with Photoshop and Clip studio is because the layouts are similar, and both programs accommodate these layers that I work in.

So all in all, it's been a fantastic week for me. Unfortunately, my animation mentor's computer broke this week! Resultantly, not much got done in that area, but the best part about my project is that there are so many things that I can be working on at once! So in the case where animations, or illustrations can't be done, there's always something like score composition or storyboarding and layout that I can work on.

Thank you so much following along, and I hope you enjoy playing and experimenting with the Flame Painter demo, (hopefully you'll see why its such an addictive art software to me!)

Enjoy your weekend, I look forward to talking with you guys again!

~Keanan~