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Jan 2020

Anyone have some tutorials for drawing meat that looks amazing like you see in foodwars?

I specifically want a semi realistic anime style. - cooked food please.

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    Jan '20
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    Jan '20
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I feel like I used to find a lo of these on pinterest and deviantart, back when i would hoard tutorials but I've lost a lot of them over time :sweat_01:

I did however manage to track these down via quick google search:

The majority seem to point out blocking the general shape of the food item, figuring out values, coloring and then adding other details to make it pop and bring out texture.

Like Kimo said those texture brushes do well to shortcut a bit but I can bet there's some others hidden around too.

Hope you can find some good tutorials, I'll probably be bookmarking this thread to see what other share myself :yum:

Edit: I just remembered this artist's tutorials on meat/meat textures as well as their own illustrations

https://www.deviantart.com/designinglua/art/Tutorial-2-Textures-Fibres-77632175859

https://www.deviantart.com/designinglua/gallery/64723993/food-illustration43

I probably should have clarified, I want it cooked.

ugh some of these image are a bit . . .

but do you mean something like this?

hmm it really seems like you'd probably need to use reference, and then to get the anime look I'd probably just make it shiny lol and try not to get too painterly with it, you wanna go for crisp and clean and have a very clear rendering process. I don't have a tutorial but I can try to help.

HAHA that's one of the 3 ref pics I was using lol. I think I'm getting done with working on it, but this is what I've got so far if you wanna give me any other suggestions. (Yes I plan to add garnish and finish the plate and all that- this is just the steak- also it's just a screen shot since the original is too big for tapas)

Ooooh that looks good! I like the texture you used to do the meat, and its definitely shiny lol. i think i'd be impressed as a reader if i saw this.

So I did a quick paintover and some notes to try to see how you could make it better

  • idk if you did it all on one layer, but maybe try to work on it a bit more without the shininess and reflectiveness?? of the meat. things like the highlights (also the steam coming from teh meat) in the painting process often are like the cherry on top.
  • as for how to approach highlights (i was a bit lazy here), if you want to do it in how the reference does is a bit different but its also a stylistic decision so up to you, personally I like the bling bling you got going on
  • the meat looks pretty rare, maybe you could have more near the edges cooked a bit more. its pretty saturated, so adding in some greys here and there could make the saturated parts look more saturated if that makes sense
  • another little detail that would add to realism ismaybe adding some seasoning and just little black bits in there, but you do already have the values pretty dark, so maybe bring the values a bit more towards the midtones and lil details like that could go farthe. You can also do this with the texture, do it on multiply layer and copy it and do it as glow layer and move it just a lil bit below the multiply layer and then a bit of blur and that texture will pop a lot more.
  • last thing is the form seems a bit mushy, which i mean its food so makes sense, you don;t want it looking too boxy, but i think especially with those diagonal lines going across its improtant to give it a solid sense of structure and it feels like a chunk of meat y'know

sorry for the sloppiness, but hopefully you find something useful in this~

Are most these cuts of meat from a sparkly cow or something?

@Hodge Thanks! Yes that is helpful, I'll see what I can do. I'm not sure I'm at your skill level yet but I'll try to use your reference. I found adding textured lines in the meat was the hardest as I attempted those lines like 8 different ways before I just used the water brush from Kimoi. There were some lines in the dark outer parts but I think those are only visible in the very large original file (but that's something I should probably consider that these markings are not visible when shrunk and probably should be more bold.) I'll def play witht he color and see if I can do something about the shape. I think the shape was influenced by some other refs tho.
I do want it to be rare as this is for mob bosses and such... and IDK blood seems fitting for that?

@TAMAnnoying uhhh IDK what cut of meat honestly. It's technically supposed to be horse meat and I don't know anything about horse meat other than it looks sorta like beef. The recipe for this dish is pretty simple tho, so I imagine it goes with most cuts.

@skicoak it's made by my MC, and the running gag(even tho near none of the readers have noticed) is that the food he makes always sparkles. The horse does not sparkle. To reveal anymore would reveal secrets/spoilers to my comic's sparkle physics.

Vampires?

Nailed it!

Your welcome~ Yeah the texture is difficult, and i think the brush you got works well, its one of those things where you can zoom in and realy render it out but its a bit time consuming.

And ah, I see so you want it to be rare. In that case, what might help is actually going into some darker pinks (even a hint of purple) at the core of the meat to sort of give it that nearly raw look, like so. You can even go in there and try to sort of render out the meat juices and bloodiness of the meat.

Alright I tried to take in what you said while still keeping some parts I want to keep (all the sparkles lol) without having to redo a bunch of it.

I tried to make it more boxy and adjusted the colors a lot. I think that already helped a bunch, the seasoning was also good to mention, I can't believe I forgot to add pepper to my steaks

Thanks a bunch for all your tips and suggestions!

It looks great! Compared to the first version I think it definitely improved and really accomplished the anime food aesthetic you wanted. I'm sure a few readers will get hungry after seeing it~

And happy to help~ learned a couple things myself doing this