User:~Spottedpool~/Charart Tutorial

'Ello. This is ~Spottedpool~, otherwise known as Spooted.

So, you've dared to venture into this cave, thinking you could learn my skills? Yes? Well, alright. I guess. I (reluctantly) will teach you how to make a somewhat decent charart.

Let's start with solids.


You'll want to upload a blank to your computer and open it in your image editing source (I use GIMP). For this tutorial, I used the longhaired female warrior. Make a new layer and place it UNDERNEATH your lineart layer. Choose your cat's fur color, how you would imagine it to be. (I used brown for this one.) Now, grab the pencil/paintbrush tool and color all over the image, making sure to draw in every inch within the lines. Don't worry about the stuff inside the lines; we'll clear that later.

Okay, add a new layer named "Earpink" and grab a pinkish-red color. Color it within the lines of the ears. (For the farthest one on this blank, there is a divider between two spaces. Put the earpink on the one closest the right side.) Now, you have a choice between two options. Smudge or blur? For my chararts, I normally do both. Unless your blur tool is sucky, select the blur tool, put it on rate 50 and run it over the earpink spots about three or four times. If you choose to smudge, grab the smudge tool, rate 50, smudge towards the eartip twice or thrice.

Make a new layer, named shading, and grab a color very much darker than your base pelt or black. Use the shading chart as a guide for where the blotches should go, and apply the color according to where you should. It doesn't have to be perfect, just make it around what you think it should be. (Optional: Before you do the next step, you can remove the waste, which I will show you how to do in the final step. ouo) Oh, and yes, I made that splotch on the side more O-ish, it should actually be a bit more like a D. c:

Go to filters-> blur-> Gaussain blur and blur your shading. I used a rate of about 27, but anywhere in between 26 and 30 should be perfect for most blanks~ c: Go to layer opacity and lower it to anywhere between 60 and 80. If it looks too dark, lighten it. Too light, define it. For this, I used an opacity of 69 *gigglesnort*, which is actually a really great opacity for most cats, except for white cats and probably black. Gray should be alright, and I'm pretty sure ginger, golden, blue-gray and Crowfeather-gray should be okay, too. c:

Go to the lineart layer and click the tool in the toolbox that resembles a wand and should be labled, well, "Wand tool." For some programs, it'll be labled as "Fuzzy select." Same thing, either way. Anyways, click outside of the lineart and it should show a figure of gray and white moving dots around the lineart layer. Go to every layer, with the Fuzzy Select still enabled, and press the button on your keyboard that reads "Delete." It should get rid of all of that waste around the lineart on the layer you are currently on. Go up a layer, remove that layer's waste, so on and so on till you reach the last layer. Go to the Select tab at the top and click "None," which will rid you of the outline. Finally, go to the shading layer and make one more layer. Name it "Eyes and nose." Choose a pink color (for all cats, period, except black cats, which is gray [See "Black Cats"]) and look for the nose, if it has a space (it doesn't in one or two blank sets) and color in the nose with that pink color. Go a little bit above to the eye and choose your cat's eye color. (For this, I used green.) Fill in the eye with your desired color. Now, choose a color slightly darker than the previous color and put it in the second to last pixel (s) from the bottom. Choose a color just a little darker than that, and fill in the third-to-last pixel(s) with that color, so on and so on, till you reach the top of the eye, where it should be darkest. Now, save it in this format: First, you need to need to NEED TO save it as a .pxd, .sumo (for sumopaint) or .xcf, so you'll have the layers in case you need to tweak it. Name it as: (Cat's name).(rank).xcf/pxd/.sumo and then save it as (name).(rank).png. For example: Derpytail.warrior.xcf and Derpytail.warrior.png. Upload it to the website and TA-DA. You've made a solid charart.