Oekaki Painter

NeonDragonArt.com finally got it's own set of Oekaki Boards. I've noticed that a lot of people are unclear on how this little program works, what the tools do, and where they are located. This tutorial covers most of the basic tools, and shows you a little bit of how to cel shade (my preferred oekaki method). Feel free to oekaki in a way that fits your style. I hope that this tutorial gives you a little bit of help with the basics of the program. Note that this tutorial is for the Painter option in oekaki. You a choice of 3 programs to use when using the boards.

Okay, here is your basic oekaki setup. I'm using "shi oekaki" the most current version. To start off with I'm going to sketch out what I'd basically like to draw very loosely.

Making sure that I'm on layer 0, I click on the top box in the right colum until it says watercolor. The watercolor brush is semi transparent and doesn't pixelate like a solid brush will.

I then rough out the basic pose and shapes that I want to use. I don't have to be exact, because I'm going to make my pricise lines later.

If you click on the lower right box that says "layer 0", it will change to layer 1. Layer 1 is on top of layer 0 so it's ideal to put your final lines on this layer (that way you can color underneath them later without worrying about messing up your linework!).

To "ink" the image I use a solid brush at 1-2 pixels big. You can zoom in to do finer details by using the + and - buttons located in the lower corners of the drawing area.

I've inked my entire image. I want all of my solid lines on layer 0 to be very clean. If you make a mistake, use the eraser tool (circled on the example to the left) to clean up your mess. DO NOT use white paint! If you use white paint, when you color under it you won't be able to see through because it is not transparent!

Making sure that I am back on layer 0 -the one with my sketchy lines- I get the eraser tool and drag the brush size to the maxium, 30. I then use it to erase out all of my sketchy lines so that I am left with a blank layer below and clean linework on top.

If you'd like a background it's best to do it first so that you don't have to worry about going into the lines or messy cleanup. To do this cloud background I used the paint option to fill layer 0 with red paint. I then used the watercolor tool to make airbrush-like clouds in the background. I used the brush slider to ajust the size of my brush when doing this.

Complete your background before moving onto color to save time. You can do it backwards if you like, but I find that it becomes to timeconsuming to do it that way.

Staying on layer 0 I use a solid brush to fill in my trenchcoat.

Since I'm going to be painting over my wings and skin, it's ok if I go out of the lines into those areas. Since I want to keep my background, I stay in the lines very carefull around edges where the trenchcoat meets the sky.

I shade in my trenchcoat using smaller solid brushes and then move onto the wings. Since I want to keep the work I've done on my trenchcoat and sky, I make sure that I'm very careful when painting near those areas.

Okay, all of my solid colors are done! Time to do that smoke!

To do transparent smoke I went back to layer 1 and used the watercolor brush to color the area. The watercolor brush is naturally transparent, so it gave me the effect that I wanted.

You don't have to follow this tutorial rule-for-rule, but maybe it was helpful for giving you a start!