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What is FireAlpaca?
FireAlpaca is a powerful free painting tool and drawing software, also an image editor that is compatible with both Mac and Windows. It is available in 10 languages. Simple tools and controls let you draw an illustration easily. It is simple, speedy and easy to use, which makes it highly recommended for the paint tool beginners, and also advanced users. FireAlpaca has clear and crisp strokes, and watercolor that you can customize. It also has easy concentration lines. You can add various effect brushes with your own pattern or image. It has a comic template, 3D perspective as well.
A REVIEW OF THE 20 FIREALPACA TUTORIALS
How to paint digitally over lineart:
In this tutorial, it is shown that if you set your layer on multiply, you can put them above your lineart. When it is on multiply, you will need to have a white background, so your colors can show through, especially if you have a transparent background. Natural hair colors make your drawing look more natural. When drawing flush (blush) for faces, use your brushes; that is, your watercolor brushes, until you get the smooth flushes, and the shadows where they should be. Basically, 3D objects should look realistic if it is a human painting. Shadow colors should be along the neck, under the neck, chin, eyes, and hair. Soft brown shadows are even better. Ensure to blend the shadow with watercolor brush. Use a smudge tool if you do not have a watercolor brush. Note that you cannot paint over black when your layer is set on multiply, instead, use a new layer. A medium-sized brush should be used to shade the hair. You can use your own style; just ensure to go over all of your lineart.
FireAlpaca Basics:
FireAlpaca is an easy program for a beginner. In this tutorial, the basics show the set-up, kinds of brushes, uses, and other tools. This video shows how each tool work, the location and when it is is used. The brushes are also explained and demonstrated. There is a difference between the new and the new via clipboard. You can use transparent colors for background colors. There are two types; standard and comic. There are different comic styles. It is better to save usually in FireAlpaca if you are not done with your painting. Rotating right and left is a bit different to using the one represented as a sign on the screen. It is easier to change the latter easily unlike the one written in the edit button. It does not change after rotating it. You can change colors at will. Snaps are used for straight lines. The brush preview show what the brush looks like. The color palette has colors you can save. You can navigate through your canvass by zooming with the red box. The reference layer is used to draw a reference from a previous image. Soft edge creates soft edges on the painting, which is different from an eraser. You can select colors that you want to use for your painting with gradient colors. There are linear and circular shapes. To deselect, go to the select tab and click deselect, or use Ctrl D.
How I paint in FireAlpaca:
The tutorial explains how to paint using the FireAlpaca. It starts by making a sketch of your drawing as you would normally start your illustration on a layer. The next sketch layer will remove the messiness. Add flat colors in the same layer, especially since they will all be merged. The eye dropper tool can help with advantage of opacity which helps with blending. When there are mistakes, you can erase with the color you want to change with. Add effect layers to give it a glow that you would not be able to do on your own. You can add whatever you want on your drawing; an advantage of using one layer. Also, when some details get difficult to see because the colors are blended so much, add some white lines to define them; especially where two colors are blended together or overlap. Experiment with your drawing. If it does not feel good enough, try something else, make it your own style.
How to FireAlpaca – Layers:
From the video, it shows that you can have as many layers as possible. You can change the name as well. Create a folder to save or hide the base (layer). There is a button to join two layers together and another to delete the layers. You can draw on a layer when you turn on the clipping on or off. Locking layers too is an advantage especially when you are sketching. You can also change the opacity.
FireAlpaca Tutorial-Learn Proportions:
There is no actual way to draw proportions while drawing; when drawing profiles and pictures, get the full proportion, using the head as a great way to measure the body. You can build the stick figure by enhancing the figures. If you are making a comedic effect, you can create huge hands, feet or a big head; except during realism. Round-up the character and start to give it shape. Also, make a measurement sheet for drawing.
How to make custom brushes on FireAlpaca:
In this video, we are being told that you can make your own brushes. We have common brushes like pencil brush, paint brush, splatter brush, texture and blending brushes. To make your own brush, start with a small canvass. Proceed to make a random brush stroke, then save as a PNG; so the background will continue to be transparent. You can name the brush if you want. Also edit the brush to the style you want. You can rotate the brush strokes, and use the random button as well. You can also use water color and other types of brushes. The pattern is also important.
How to use FireAlpaca:
This video shows us how FireAlpaca works. It talks about the brushes first. The pen; is an average brush, it’s plain and good for outlining, though not necessarily the best sketching tool. Eraser cleans or erases painting you want to be removed. Watercolor is used for painting a blurred kind of paint, and it also blends the paintings together. Airbrush is more like spray paint, and very blurry, just like Blur brush. Pencil is a different kind. You can draw over it to get a darker color. Finger spreads out the painting just like using your fingers. There is also a FireAlpaca logo. Marker is just like the pen, but a bit pointy at the edges. Thorn makes thorny images, and symmetry makes copies on the opposite side of your drawing. The video also talks about layers, clipping, select tool; which is a digital art essential that is used to move letters and images around. The gradient bar also lets you select images.
How to clean lineart in FireAlpaca:
This is usually very time-consuming. The video shows how to do a better line art by first turning on your correction feature, and also setting a level while drawing. Depending on how steady your hands are, it gives the drawing more realism. Higher correction speeds are recommended for much larger simple shapes, but for little changes, work lower. If you want to change color lines, lock other layers and leave just the lines you want to change.
Tutorial: Painting in FireAlpaca:
After the basic sketching, you can use a magnifying glass to zoom in while painting. You can also change the opacity. Line your sketch. You can also flip your canvass back and forth. Be careful with changes in your brush size, also the layers and choosing what brush to work with. Note that letter D changes the palette color to black and white. Use the pen to start inking. The paint bucket tool can be used to save time if you don’t want to use the brushes.
How to make comic pages:
You can change tabs to comic at the top, instead of opening standard canvas. Then choose your options. The bookbinding is the first part while the safe zone is the second part. It’s safer to draw on the second part. The comic guidelines can be used for assistance. You can also hide it to create more space on the panel. You can add panel material on another layer to choose the width of the panel. When you put the “@” symbol on the layer, it means you cannot erase anything on that layer.
Digital Art Tips that will make your life easier:
The video is for an intermediate and a beginner who does not know too much about FireAlpaca. You can make a new canvass. There are layers. It is easy to make new layers. Layers are good in case of mistakes. If you have multiple layers, you can name all of them. When you want to color your painting, you can make a box, and make a transparent color with the fill tool, which makes coloring very easy. Black color can be used for lining, or use clipping after making a new layer.
Different Shading Method/Picking Colors:
In the video, highlights are used instead of shading. If everything is in one layer, duplicate the layers and protect the second layer. Play with the opacity a lot to suit your taste. Try lots of colors. Use the eraser tool to erase parts that should not be shared. Your drawing will determine the shadows to be used. Basically, it is easier when you color the whole picture with the preferred color and erase out the parts you want different. The video ended up being mostly about colors instead of shading.
Tangela Painting in FireAlpaca:
The video shows an example of blending colors to create a wonderful painting. The video shows the painting of a Tangela to green by incorporating blue-green colors thereby giving it a clean and stylish finish. The
How to color Grayscale Painting:
The video shows an explanation of how to color grayscale painting. It starts using gradient tool, adding gradient and changing
How to make Smooth Lines on Fire Alpaca/Digital Art:
FireAlpaca has everything to make a beautiful painting. You can use your pen, ensure the size is small. It is easier to make smooth lines with a small pen size. If you cannot make smooth lines, there is a button on the top bar that creates smooth lines, circles and other shapes you want to create.
How to Animate on FireAlpaca:
FireAlpaca is not the best application for animations. The tutorial clearly states that. You have to create all your frames in animate mode, and this works using only “onion skin” feature which makes it easy to paint simple frame-by-frame changes. Using one layer makes the animation more complicated to create, unlike using multiple layers. To use one layer, you have to create duplicate folders, so you can put many layers in one folder, so it counts as one frame. You can use autoplay to see what the animation looks like, and also increase or reduce the speed of the animation. After the work is done, you export the frames as one final animation.
7 Shortcuts for FireAlpaca You never knew about:
The shortcuts are clearly for users who already understand the basics, or for advanced users of FireAlpaca. The first shortcut is the status bar; holds basic information, you can give yourself more space by clicking on the status bar and hiding it. The second shortcut is the brush adjustment; move it to the right to make it bigger, to the left to make it smaller, or you can use CTRL + ALT + DOUBLE TAP to change the default size. The third shortcut is brushes; if you hold C down when drawing, it turns the brush into an eraser. The fourth shortcut is rotating canvas; by ALT + SPACE + turning your cursor. The fifth shortcut is the zooming in and out; CTRL + or CTRL – will zoom in or out. The sixth shortcut
How I Color Hair:
In the video, we learn that you should cover all the hair with a particular color, though that depends on your mood and the colors you like, also the lighting. The hair towards the back or inside should
CONCLUSION
FireAlpaca is a very useful application that provides lots of great features and simple controls that make it easy to use. It is straightforward and can be customized easily. It has lots of editing tools, a 3D perspective, light performance, original brush, even though it is a free application. There have been reviews comparing FireAlpaca with other graphic design applications; so far there is no negative review. For beginners, tutorials have been made to simplify how to use the application. I hope this review helps to explain more about FireAlpaca, the basics of it, the way you can create with it, save, shade, line and even create an animation with it.
Writers: Eseandre and Toni Justamante
