-= Glossary of Terms =-
Introduction
Artists have many ways to describe the techniques used in their art. These aren’t really common knowledge outside of the community, so I’ve included descriptions here of every term used and a small visual representation if necessary.
Bust Shot, Half Body, Full Body, and Headshot
Bust Shot, Half Body, and Full Body describe how much of the character is being depicted, bust shot being the least and full body being the most. Headshot is also one of these terms, a tier right above bust shot that only includes the head. I typically don’t do these, but I might consider it under special circumstances. Same description also applies for non-humanoid (or “feral”) character designs!
YCH
YCH is shorthand for ‘Your Character Here’, most often used in pre-rendered scenes that artists offer to draw other characters inserted over the originals.
As used for my YCH, it’s meant to explain that the piece is meant for characters that have a completed design. No conceptual designs will be accepted here, I need references to work with.
Options
My commissions list a lot of options for the various tiers within each category. I’ll go through each set of options so that there’s no confusion during ordering.
✦ Choices are mutually exclusive to each other, but not to different option categories. For example, weighted lineart can be colored or black.
Sketch
✦ Sketches don’t have any additional options because they’re fast, messy, and cheap.
Lineart
Black vs Colored
✦ Black: Standard lineart with solid black, or white depending on how light or dark the intended background is.
✦ Colored: Intended for heavy stylization, and only available for this tier. Meant to reflect the colors of the character onto the lineart instead of having black lines and internal colors.
Messy vs Weighted
✦ Messy: The version that’s been shown in the examples so far: essentially a refined sketch. Good if you want your result faster, or if you prefer the style of more uneven lines. Speedpaints aren’t available for these, due to their similarity to sketch pieces. I recommend that messy lineart only be requested for Flats tier and up, though it is available for lineart only pieces.
✦ Weighted: What I typically gravitate to for serious pieces. There’s high attention to detail and the line weight is distributed manually. As such, this is a very time and labor intensive way to do lineart.
Flats
✦ Only black lineart is available in this category, but otherwise the option of messy or weighted lineart remains, as flatcolor drawings include lineart.
No Lighting vs Simple Lighting
✦ No Lighting: Hopefully fairly self explanatory. Considered the ‘true’ flat color option, no shading at all is applied.
✦ Simple Lighting: Almost like a more delicate version of Airbrushed rendering in a Full Render piece. However, it is much more subtle and serves mostly to give the piece a softened look.
Reference Sheet vs Showcase
✦ Reference Sheet: Has some baked in restrictions that overwrite the lighting options. Reference Sheets have no lighting and often contain much more information about the depicted character than a typical art piece.
✦ Showcase: Available for both Full Render and Flatcolor pieces, it describes a pose that mostly shows off the design of the character. Poses tend to be less exaggerated and effects are kept to a minimum as to not obscure the design. Poses also tend to reflect the type of activity the character would be doing already.
Full Render
✦ Only black lineart is available in this category, but otherwise the option of messy or weighted lineart remains, as flatcolor drawings include lineart.
✦ Additionally, Reference Sheets aren’t considered ‘full render’ pieces due to their inherent lack of shading and effects and thus can’t be selected when commissioning a full render.
Character Showcase vs Poster
✦ Character Showcase: Available for both Full Render and Flatcolor pieces, it describes a pose that mostly shows off the design of the character. Poses tend to be less exaggerated and effects are kept to a minimum as to not obscure the design.
✦ Poster: Typically features much more dynamic or exotic poses or over-the-top special effects that can obscure a character’s full design.
Airbrushed vs Cell Shaded
✦ Airbrushed: A shading/lighting style that heavily features the airbrush. It gives pieces a delicate, soft final appearance.
✦ Cell Shaded: Often used by animators, cell shading is a shading/lighting style that uses hard edges and transparency to create the illusion of light and shadow. It gives pieces an altogether more cartoonish final appearance.
Multiple Characters
✦ Fairly self-explanatory. I only allow multiple characters on full render and flatcolor pieces. Since adding an entire extra character effectively doubles the work, I want to have something more complete to show for it. I might be willing to negotiate multiple characters for lineart or sketch pieces, but it isn’t a guarantee that I’ll agree.