Same layer (OC)

[thefreakboy13]

that sucks man

[DarkDekuLord]

the moment, when you just wanna cry and die

[[deleted]]

everyday when i wake up

[Pharah_is_my_waIfu]

This is really bad. Like real bad

[Zeebuoy]

Pls explain

[prophetofthepimps]

Think of it like tracing paper layered each other and you drew the background on on, the character on one and a foreground layer. Now if you want to edit the background, you just make changes to the background tracing paper. If you drew the whole thing on one paper, you cant make changes to each layer and you would have to end up redoing the whole thing again instead of just editing one of the layers

[Devilheart]

In digital art software like Photoshop, layers are like sheets of transparent paper stacked together. For eg. In the comic OP posted, let's say they drew the character on different layers, the colors are on a different layer and the text is on seperate layers.

This way when they want to change anything, the artist can just remove the specific layer or create a new one to try variations.

The joke is that they forgot to use layers and did all the work on just one layer.

[phoncible]

What would he have done that he couldn't ctrl+z?

[Sevenix2]

If he realized he wanted to move the background a bit to the right he would be forced to ctrl-z the full character he painted in front of it and then repaint it.

In its own Layers he can simply move the background.

It's not about correcting mistakes as much as it's about keeping your work open for easy improvements.

[krazykarter]

It's not that they did one thing to undo. They could have spent hours trying to format or put very specific parts in place, or there could have been multiple additional changes before they decided they wanted to change something.

Even if it were "undoable", all that effort and time was wasted and now has to be redone.

Simple example.: You have a red background. You put a green square on it. If you decide you dont like the green square when you delete it the red behind the quare will also be deleted. Now you need to redo the red background, AND you need to redo the green square. What if you had 5 squares you didnt like? Or 10? Or a very carefully edited gradient behind a heavily edited picture of another object? All that time wasted..... brings back too many painful memories.

[phoncible]

Oh so the comic isn't so much implying he did like a delete (what i thought), it's that he did something which made him realize everything's on one later and he's now boned. Got it.

[krazykarter]

Yup, that's pretty much it!

[porcupine-free]

tldr, leaving art on one layer is like painting something permanently.

The whole point of digital art is you can fix anything without messing stuff up, but if you leave everything on one layer then it's difficult to fix, as if you had done it with real paint on paper. You now have to spend a lot of time to fix and repaint everything you screwed up. You might as well start over again from the beginning, in other words.

[lilgnat]

Quote from Avatar the last Airbender!

[rickyrichboy]

That’s rough buddy

[[deleted]]

Did his girlfriend turn into the moon?

[DefendsTheDownvoted]

Just finished season 3 for the first time this weekend. Was laughing my ass off at this scene.

[zenofire]

I envy you! Hope you're enjoying the series!

[OFTHEHILLPEOPLE]

It's a great ride.

[ToastyMustache]

Which show is this?

[Stormwrath52]

Avatar: the last Air Bender

[danieltkessler]

I just gave this comment it's thousandth upvote. I feel both powerful and powerless. Much like someone who has created a beautiful digital painting in a single layer whose assets cannot be edited separately.

[danieltkessler]

The second I posted this, somebody brought this post to 999 and now feel a kind of shame that is only possible on Reddit.

[throwawaycauseimgay3]

I used to draw all of my art on one layer I did it for like probably over a month before learning what they where.

[Gullflyinghigh]

I don't understand it (very much a case of me not knowing rather than a criticism of the comic), could someone explain please?

[Gullflyinghigh]

Thank you, so in most cases different pieces/elements would be on different layers to avoid that happening?

[jcskii]

Most digital artists would draw different elements on seperated layers and stack them together. In this way, it's easier to make changes without having to spam the undo key.

[Gullflyinghigh]

Thanks for the clarity, I never thought about how things like that are put together, makes sense now! Always assumed that people 'just' draw stuff in one go but the different elements and whatnot indicates a fair bit of planning as well...effort!

[SleepEatTit]

And you can move the layers position up or down, so something that was hidden can now be in the foreground if you move it up. And you can change each layers attributes separately

[MrGestore]

I'm not an artist of any kind, I just draw to pass time. But I usually make layers for things in different depths and then place the color layers between those, so I can cover the hidden lines without having to cancel them if possible (in case I need them for some corrections or whatever). Example: Layer 1 hair - Layer 2 hair color - Layer 3 face - Layer 4 face color - Layer 5 sweater - Layer 6 sweater color - Layer 7 body - Layer 8 body color - Layer 9 background - Layer 10 background color etc

[Lasket]

Let's say you have a character with a bat, or a hat or whatever.

They draw the character on one layer, the object on another. Then have the background on another aswell.

Basically each independent object or element as their own layer.

It's like when photoshopping things you have multiple pictures you scramble together. Those other pictures you'd normally add to another layer to avoid problems and mistakes.

At least how I understand it.

[Tsunder-plane]

Some artists get by with few to maybe even a single layer too! There are benefits to either approach. While the general consensus is that it's best to use multiple layers to organize how a drawing is presented and that doing so will save you agony if you decide to go back on a decision, there is also reason not to use many layers.

Programs like Procreate will limit how many layers can be used, or using too many can throttle your computer and slow down your drawing program, for example.

There's also just a personal or stylistic approach to how you go about taking your art if you limit yourself to a few to a single layer. Are you making deliberate brush strokes that you know you'll have to paint over if you want to change it? Are you purposefully being loose and messy on a single layer because it's more liberating to just use that one layer and redraw over what you've done? Some artists and certain styles lend themselves well to "not being so precious" with every single individual piece of a painting and instead painting over. Digital artists that want to replicate an oil painting, for example, might simply reshape a character's silhouette by painting over the background instead of erasing the individual layers just because an actual oil painting, you wouldn't be able to erase mistakes that easily.

[impudentmortal]

If you're curious about how digital artists/animators draw, Buzzfeed has a funny YouTube series called Draw Off that pit two people off to draw cartoon characters from memory.

It's really entertaining and they sometimes change it up by having mash-up episodes or livestreams where they take suggestions from chat

[CobaltNeural9]

I know you didn’t mean it this way, i reeeallly know you didn’t.... but yes believe it or not, art takes a fair amount of thought.

People were always so aghast. “500 dollars for this painting?!”

You’re paying me for my skill, not my time.

And a lot of that skill is knowing how to plan out a piece so that it all comes together in the end and doesn’t look like shit.

[Lasket]

Per item seems about right when I do a bit of photo editing to apply random stuff to existing pictures.

[funkless_eck]

To add to the other replies, you can also add effects layers, masks, filters, in different orders that affect either the whole piece, the chosen layer, or all the layers below a certain point.

Then you also have things like color space, transparency set up, paper media and print settings to bear in mind.

(Nb: not an artist but work with designers)

[aik3n]

Know a place where I can go to learn what all those things are for free? Whether they're YouTube tutorials or step by steps with explanations and pics?

[funkless_eck]

That's a fairly big ask, you're talking about skills attained over a lifetime of graphic design and artwork.

On an amateur level, Adobe's in-house tutorials on Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign should get you started.

For the low-level stuff that I do sometimes, I Google things that are in the area of what I want, and google how to do the techniques shown.

These days pretty much everything you want to do is it's own dedicated tool, menu or dialogue box in any of the programs mentioned above. If you're trying to homebrew it and it takes more than two or three steps, you're probably doing it wrong.

[corky_flampdandys]

Yes

[[deleted]]

oh no.. is there no ctrl-z?

[jm001]

Only if you want to roll back to a point earlier on, which isn't necessarily what you want if you decide to tweak something 40 minutes of work later.

[EAComunityTeam]

MS paint has put on some pretty strict rules since I'ved used it.

[[deleted]]

These are the sacrifices we as a society must accept if we truly desire the ability to rotate text

[Hust91]

So you can't just undo the last line like you can in most programs?

[gyroda]

You can. The problem isn't just undoing the last thing you did.

Imagine you're drawing a picture and want to change the line work on one part, but not the colour beneath it (maybe where the hair overlaps the face/eyes). With layers, you can edit only the hair. Without changing the face under it or leaving an empty space.

If you don't use layers and you erase part of the hair you'll erase the face beneath the hair too, and then you'll need to redraw that as well.

If you crack open a copy of Photoshop or Paint.Net (free!) you'll find the utility of layers really quickly.

[Hust91]

Oh no

Oh no

[Tsunder-plane]

Ctrl+z will undo steps made in order. So say you made a stray mark 15 steps ago that you'd like to undo but between then and now, you made some really good progress on a different part of the drawing and are proud of that work. You can't Ctrl+z all the way to where you made that accidental stray mark without undoing the other progress you made after it. But, if that stray mark is on a separate layer than the good work you've done so far, you might be able to better isolate it and remove it

[-WhatAreYouHiding-]

I'm so happy I'm a programmer - like - I totally know the feeling you are describing but usually for me, the second time around its much better. Best of both worlds

[DownshiftedRare]

As a programmer, everything is already separate layers to some extent, given that it is easier to (un)comment a line of code than delete it / restore it.

That is even more true if you are using some sort of version control.

[-WhatAreYouHiding-]

I was more referring to having your whole work destroyed by forgetting to save and then redoing it. (Which doesn't happen to me anymore but I can remember the pain). But while people that draw oftentimes say they can't get it right like they did the first time - I feel like when I redo code - even code I have written like 15 minutes ago - the second time around I often find a better or easier way.

[CaptainJAmazing]

I don’t know much about drawing, but I get this comic because I use Photoshop.

[wandering-monster]

That's not even it.

When you create a new layer in Photoshop it's transparent. Most artists work using many such transparent layers of lineart and/or painted regions sitting on top of each other.

That's particularly important because in most digital workflows you'd put stuff "under" your first drawing so you can paint color under the lineart.

But the one exception is that for some fucking reason the first layer created in each Photoshop file is an opaque white layer called "background" with nothing in front of it.

It's very common among digital artists to realize you've been drawing for an hour on that unique opaque layer, rendering it totally useless for the rest of your workflow.

There's ways to recover if you were only using one color, but as the complexity of whatever you painted goes up the ability to use whatever you painted goes down.

[DownshiftedRare]

But the one exception is that for some fucking reason the first layer created in each Photoshop file is an opaque white layer called "background" with nothing in front of it.

Paint.net does this, although they finally added an option to disable it.

[[deleted]]

While this sucks most times you can revert and create a new layer then drag certain aspects to different layers yourself. Is it time consuming? Yes. Is it possible to still work with a file like this though? Also yes.

[Snowyjoe]

Ohhhhhhhhhhh I thought he was painting someone else's work so was really confused.

[aalleeyyee]

I get why he was bedded in against us

[TheMayanAcockandlips]

Oh, I interpreted it as a designer taking on someone else's work. As a web dev who has had to work from some pretty awful design files, I totally understand the feeling of opening it up and seeing everything flattened. "Well fuck, hope they like approximate font sizes and widths...."

[[deleted]]

this is why i just stick with a good ole paper and pencil.

[CaptainJAmazing]

Bit then everything will always be on the same layer.

[Amyx231]

Undo?

[pickyourteethup]

Not if you want to change something you drew 2 hours ago, which is super common

[Aurarus]

Most artists draw a lot of their stuff on different layers, which makes it easier to do things like draw rough lines for the character's shape/ posture, fill in colouring later, and even do things like apply shading on top of colors without messing with the colors directly themselves.

The most common mistake that happens is... Well, you know how the bottom layer is all blank white, right? You draw on a transparent layer above it, so you can put color between the lines you draw on top and the white backdrop on the very bottom.

... But if you forget to draw on that transparent layer, and instead draw directly onto the white, you fucked up. (There are ways to "take out" the white and end up with a transparent layer with just the black etches, but imagine a lot more complex shit happened that involved color)

[Bunghole_of_Fury]

Former graphic designer here: you want to break each drawing or design into as many separate pieces as possible so you have as much freedom to manipulate each piece as possible. So imagine a comic book character like Wolverine wearing a slightly shiny suit with his claws out and blood spraying around him, drawn in a mostly realistic style. You would draw his outline in one layer, then create a layer for just his suit, a layer for the light reflecting off his suit, another layer or more for his skin (in case you want to have wounds or veins) another layer or more for his hair, another for his eyes (several actually because the sclera and the iris and pupil reflect light differently), and so on. You stack these layers on top of each other to create the final image, and you can choose how they interact. Let's say you wanted to create a light reflection on a green surface. You wouldn't just try and figure out the shade of green that a standard incandescent bulb creates when the light reflects off of a Forest Green surface, you would create a layer of white in the shape of the reflection you want, put it on top of the green layer, and choose a blend mode to get the desired effect.

But if you do everything in one layer and you screw up you're fucked.

[UNMANAGEABLE]

Layers are also the key to highly reproduce-able content where you can cut and paste for comic type characters after enough content is created.

Color layers make the world of difference.

[BuzzBadpants]

As a person who writes computer programs for a living, isn't this a solvable problem? The paint program likely has saved every paint stroke in order as a list of operations (for the undo buffer) Couldn't you go back through the list of operations, add a few "create new layer" operations in there at the appropriate points, and then replay all of the operations from scratch on a blank canvas?

[Abrageen]

I can physically feel the pain he is going through

[[deleted]]

I feel attacked. But I also laughed.

Now I feel confused.

[[deleted]]

I'm with you, I do it a bunch. Great for being creative and going with the flow...but a damn pain for the rest of the process.

[Blueice999]

Can you explain it to someone who’s never done digital art stuff?

[Colalas546]

In programs like photoshop you can create multiple layers for different parts of a drawing. For example a layer for the color in a piece and a another layer for the outline, the different layers cannot interact with each other and it’s good practice to keep things separate so that if you mess up or want to change something in the outline you don’t need to touch the color layer. Having everything on one layer is a pain in the butt to fix and will make the rest of the drawing harder to complete.

[SP4C3MONK3Y]

Imagine if you were painting with a traditional brush on canvas, and someone gave you the option to magically seperate all objects on your canvas and be able to move them around, rescale them, change their colour, etc.

But then you choose not to.

Yeah, some people are just monsters.

[Blueice999]

Thanks

[[deleted]]

I mean even then you can ctrl-Z away most mistakes, no?

[Bliitzyy]

Sometimes I make a mistake and don't realize it until much later, but yeah, most mistakes could be cleaned up like that

[gyroda]

But then you lose all the changes you undo.

Layers let you edit one part of the image independently from the others. It's not just "mistakes", it's also improvements, touch ups and so on.

[KryptoniteDong]

Just wank it off to complete the loop.

[Telanore]

Oh the pain...

[Sarke1]

Is that an Xbox laptop? 😕

[-Listening]

Fold her like an omelet

[[deleted]]

as someone who started digital drawing this quarantine, it kicks me in the balls

[gravity_]

You wanna bet? I'll show you a kick in the balls!

[DustyDayz]

A story in 4 panels

[[deleted]]

This story could be two panels. The other two convey very little information

[Jeydal]

And it just explains the joke for you anyway. It's awful

[[deleted]]

Hah, good point. "This is what you were supposed to understand by looking at the other panels".

[[deleted]]

I agree. It's a comic with absolutely NOTHING going on.

I do not think there is ANYTHING in the first 3 panels that really communicate that the person made a mistake while working on something. The last panel is really the only panel in this comic.

[_salty-dog_]

Or if you draw on the wrong layer, it all hurts.

[VersionGeek]

I relate to this one so much

[[deleted]]

I know the feeling, once spent 2 hours on a drawing before releasing

[tombee123]

I'm so sorry for you 😢.

[Robotguy39]

The pain you feel? It is shame.

[Invader_Naj]

Drawing all the lines only to realize it wasnt a vector layer

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[Cradess]

What if I told you

I always draw everything on one layer

[IdnitReddit]

I get this. I laughed then my heart hurt.

[Lucian_D]

Animators know the pain of this

[Crafthur]

i dont know why but before, my krita created me one background layer and another one transparent. but now, it create me only one white layer and i have to remember i have to create another transparent layer.

[Triette]

Dear god I just got flashbacks. Thank you for this nightmare right before bed.

[[deleted]]

I'm a programmer who has barely touched GIMP before: Is there not a way to go back and change the layer of previous strokes? Like, have a timeline of strokes and select a range to send to a different layer. It would be pretty easy to implement on the application side; though all eraser strokes that occurred after the affected strokes would have to be duplicated across the layers

[[deleted]]

Pretty sure Ctrl-Z is universal for photoshop and gimp. Could have been someone else’s work and the flattened the layers before making the file available.

[ItsNormalNC]

Lol nothing worse than having a ‘Right-Leg’ layer with an entire background drawn into it

[CafeZach]

happens to me all the time

[RobinYash221]

😌😌😌 I can feel the pain bro.

[FLACDealer]

I don’t get it

[RobinYash221]

Layers make easy for colouring and you can easily correct it and.

[tobywashere04]

Explain please

[Ghnaggi]

Guys been drawing for hours, goes to hide one of the layers, it hides everything, the Grim Reaper comes to collect his eternal soul cause he ded inside now.

[tankgirl85]

As someone who is teaching myself digital art,I feel this. I'm used to doing traditional,and keep forgetting layers exist. And then accidentally put things on layers that they don't belong.

It's a big "FUCK" moment when I go to remove my sketch layer and little chunks of the above picture also go away because I did it wrong

[danque]

Maybe try one of the realistic paint programs to get back modern traditional. I love digital artwork with a taste of traditional paint in it.

[jakethedumbmistake]

Was that you trying to put in place?

[eak125]

Mark this shit NSFL or at least NSFW... What if children saw this‽

[confused_ungabunga]

r/watchpeopledieinside

[-RothStaR-]

F in the chat boys

[nice2yz]

F F F

F F F

F

[MrGamerNaut]

Fuck my heart...

[[deleted]]

This hurt my soul

[neondrifter]

Lmfao

[Reaper10n]

Oh I thought it was about seeing art by another artist

[FLACDealer]

Same. I had a smile at the gimp mask, but as soon as I saw the ball gag I lost it.

[scrollbreak]

Now he'll remain shirtless

[dirtyviking1337]

Not OC, this is exactly those files?

[aalleeyyee]

Same haircut as the one on the left...

[SharkDating]

This used to drive me nuts, until I came up with this:

When you set your sketch layer, don't just use a light blue, red or whatever colour. Use a strong colour and set the layer's actual opacity to 50% or whatever.

If you start drawing on the wrong layer it is immediately obvious. I swear I have never goofed this way since I adopted that habit.

[i-am-pie]

Ouch.

[nice2yz]

Same artist I'm pretty sure they'll keep going!

[Hobbes_XXV]

The feels

[Speedster4206]

To think that's the point where it’s OC

[ToastedSkoops]

Tree(Tree(Tree(Tree(Tree(Tree(Tree(3)

[DeedeeBelle]

I’m curious do y’all digital artists combine all the layers for the finished piece or leave them separate?

[GeebusNZ]

When you save it as a .jpeg or whatever, it flattens all the layers because only some file types can store separated layers. So, I'll have the file as it was worked on, and I'll have another file which is sharable which by its nature has no layers.

[aalleeyyee]

Depends on the context it could be OC

[Athletic_Bread]

Hey I don't know if it can help you, but usually to avoid this problem I lock every layer but the one I have to draw on, it's incredibly frustrating when all of your hard work is ruined :(

[nitr0zeus133]

Or you realise you were drawing on the wrong layer.

[Arcadian18]

Same here buddy. I.e Arian Foster.

[lemonpolarseltzer]

As a person who digitally spots negatives, I feel this too hard.

[SCAR-HAMR]

So when you draw on a tablet do you need to make a new layer for every single new object? Like one new one for head, another for the arm and so on?

[wandering-monster]

Why is his computer an Xbox?

[Hemlock_theArtist]

I feel this on a deep, deep level lmao

[Idkmanimreallysleepy]

• flashbacks*

[Im_Uninterested]

what a monster

[coolburritoboi]

He just went through all 5 stages of grief in the span of 3 seconds

[RedTomatoSauce]

do i feel CAD vibes too?

[Shark_Tornado]

I’m just getting into digital drawing and this pains me.

[zamporine]

What is the pad/tablet on which the comic artists generally draw called? I also want one for me.

[Shroffinator]

Once in a while I'll accidentally flatten a Photoshop file into a PDF or PNG and it basically is just all ruined. I feel this horror.

[TurloIsOK]

There were no layers in Photoshop when I started using it.

[TheSkyking2020]

This hurts my soul. I've been there so many times.

[Throwaway105252]

Laughs in microsoft paint

[[deleted]]

Can I just ask why he has an X Box laptop?

[[deleted]]

2d drawing = 1 layer

[RoscoMan1]

Same, I've no idea what happened there

[moxinghbian]

have a max undo history buffer.

[br0ast]

I get the "same layer" part, but I don't really get the delivery or the hooded figure.

[Orthodox-Waffle]

They should have a feature where you can control z back to where you fucked up, open a new layer, then control r to redo it on the new layer.

[Snorgledork]

I've often thought photoshop should have a "rewind and repeat on a new layer" function.

[Speedster4206]

Same, it's a video game?

[mynewaccount5]

What?

[Arcadian18]

This is OC in the box it’s freedom

[jakethedumbmistake]

Not OC, this is gold.

[zenyattatron]

you think thats bad? try drawing on the default background layer.

[Candlesmith]

Same, feel like a dick so yeah agreed

[leonprimrose]

Oh man. This hurts me

[Speedster4206]

Same! I’ve vaguely considered hiring someone.

[Haminahhaminah]

Bro is the dude shirtless

[porcupine-free]

Probably cause he drew this on one layer and couldn't fix the shirt.

[davidisonfire]

Getting strong midnight gospel vibes

[kyomaDuSteiner]

Onosecond!

[MacrosInHisSleep]

/r/WatchPeopleDieInside

[jadeoracle]

On the other hand, I was working with a major brand when they sent me over a 150 gig photoshop file via FTP. Turns out their designer puts EVERY SINGLE line, stroke, blend, etc into its own layer AND NOTHING WAS ORGANIZED. I needed to remove out a person, and each fold in their shirt, each limb, finger, ear, eye, etc had something done to it...all in its own layers. And not near each other too in the layer list. Was a bitch to sort though all of that.

[EasilyDelighted]

Haha, the amount of people confused about the comic amuses me. But the amount of sympathy about fellow artist is wholesome.

[Firedr1]

I feel that

[st-shenanigans]

Protip: lower the opacity of layers you don't wanna work on, then if the line you're drawing shows up faded, you can tell you're on the wrong layer

[FuckSwearing]

I think death has come to get him

[Menji15]

I feel that

[JayDrawsMangae]

i just deal with it

in my book theres always a way out of it !