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Description
"I'd like to be a stick of butter." said Fluttershy. So Twilight whipped up a spell that turned her into one!

... Okay that never happened, lol!

==========

Program used: GIMP 2.6
Resource used: fav.me/d4qiz5i by for a color reference guide.
Layers: 18
Time Spent: About 13 hours

==========

I've seen various other "Buttershy" drawings out there, but none how I imagined them. So I decided to try my hand at making my own. So while the idea of "Buttershy" isn't exactly mine, the vision of this incarnation is. The character isn't mine either of course as Fluttershy belongs to Hasbro. This is just fan art, but you probably knew that.

As for why it took so long to make, I was essentially learning how to imitate the show's vector art style in a bitmap image creator, so I had to figure out the best ways to do things and was essentially learning it as I went, so parts of it are a bit smoother than others as I figured out better techniques, but I did my best to iron out problems. (A lot of "Crtl + Z"s were used as well. )

By far the best things in GIMP for imitating the art style are the paths tool and ellipse tool because they yield the cleanest lines. The best way to use them is to carve out color blobs you draw on a new layer into the shapes and lines you want. For lines, you could also probably use the paths tool and "stroke selection" at a line thickness that matches the thickness you need then adjust them as needed with the eraser. But by the time I thought of that, all the lines were done, lol! Next time I suppose!

It is next to impossible to get perfectly clean, sharp lines consistently using just a pressure-sensitive tablet and circle brush... or at least ones that look like the show's. Early on I tried that for certain spots and the best ways I came up with using just a brush for lines was to do them in a single smooth stroke then erase the leftovers into sharp lines (if needed) or just generally clean them up or to hold the shift key for straight lines and do it in very small segments using the brush size you need (I was using basic 11, 23, 27 and 31 circle brushes) for a certain line thickness. But this leads to unevenness at times that is hard to smooth out.

So yeah, that's where my time went on this project that probably could've been a lot simpler, lol! If I made another one, I'm sure I could do it much faster since I know the techniques I need to imitate the show's style. I... probably should've just sketched it in GIMP, then learned how to vector it in Inkscape for a massive resolution picture export. But I have a hard time getting myself to stray from my beloved GIMP, lol!

In any case though, I hope you like it!

(Critiques and tips are welcomed for future projects!)

Enjoy!

Description
"I'd like to be a stick of butter." said Fluttershy. So Twilight whipped up a spell that turned her into one!

... Okay that never happened, lol!

==========

Program used: GIMP 2.6
Resource used: fav.me/d4qiz5i by for a color reference guide.
Layers: 18
Time Spent: About 13 hours

==========

I've seen various other "Buttershy" drawings out there, but none how I imagined them. So I decided to try my hand at making my own. So while the idea of "Buttershy" isn't exactly mine, the vision of this incarnation is. The character isn't mine either of course as Fluttershy belongs to Hasbro. This is just fan art, but you probably knew that.

As for why it took so long to make, I was essentially learning how to imitate the show's vector art style in a bitmap image creator, so I had to figure out the best ways to do things and was essentially learning it as I went, so parts of it are a bit smoother than others as I figured out better techniques, but I did my best to iron out problems. (A lot of "Crtl + Z"s were used as well. )

By far the best things in GIMP for imitating the art style are the paths tool and ellipse tool because they yield the cleanest lines. The best way to use them is to carve out color blobs you draw on a new layer into the shapes and lines you want. For lines, you could also probably use the paths tool and "stroke selection" at a line thickness that matches the thickness you need then adjust them as needed with the eraser. But by the time I thought of that, all the lines were done, lol! Next time I suppose!

It is next to impossible to get perfectly clean, sharp lines consistently using just a pressure-sensitive tablet and circle brush... or at least ones that look like the show's. Early on I tried that for certain spots and the best ways I came up with using just a brush for lines was to do them in a single smooth stroke then erase the leftovers into sharp lines (if needed) or just generally clean them up or to hold the shift key for straight lines and do it in very small segments using the brush size you need (I was using basic 11, 23, 27 and 31 circle brushes) for a certain line thickness. But this leads to unevenness at times that is hard to smooth out.

So yeah, that's where my time went on this project that probably could've been a lot simpler, lol! If I made another one, I'm sure I could do it much faster since I know the techniques I need to imitate the show's style. I... probably should've just sketched it in GIMP, then learned how to vector it in Inkscape for a massive resolution picture export. But I have a hard time getting myself to stray from my beloved GIMP, lol!

In any case though, I hope you like it!

(Critiques and tips are welcomed for future projects!)

Enjoy!