I want to know what effects were used on these digital drawings I saw on Twitter

Question

I was browsing through some artists pages on Twitter and I found these images:

_{From this Twitter post.}

I'm new at digital drawing, so I don't know how to ask, or what to look for in order to find out what it is, so I have two questions:

What are those blue lines outlining the line art of the first image? Is it done manually with a brush, or is it some effect layer?

Also, what is it that makes the image look "granulated"?

I'm not sure if I'm being clear enough, so let me know if you need more information. Thanks!

Answer 1

I can't tell you exactly how this was made. To me it looks like it was digitally painted somehow. Especially if I compare it to other images from the same artist.

Here are some tips on how to achieve the same look.

I made a quick sketch with black outlines multiplied onto some simple fills:

The effect on the outline looks like Red/Cyan Fringe, which is something you actually normally want to remove from photos. I use Filter > Lens Correction... and set the Fix Red/Cyan Fringe to -100%:

Which results in this:

This looks alright, but a little subtle, so I repeat the effect 3 more times using Alt + Ctrl + F:

That's more like it!

The granulated look can be achieved in many different, more or less sophisticated, ways. Here I simply flatten the image and use Filter > Noise > Add Noise... to add some subtle Uniform noise:

I think the result looks similar to your reference:

Experiment with the settings to fine-tune the effect.