The Issues With Starting Microscopic

Jacob p -

Glad to see you all again, Plasmid Pioneers. These past weeks I’ve been dealing with upsizing my drawings (from the microscopic level I like) and finding new methods to speed up the process. I have also been very busy with the trip to Madrid (I hope the Lactobacillus bacteria in my gut can stand alcohol) and catching up with my site placement.

I have mostly been focused on drawing but this has been really difficult. I took a photo of my original paper concept drawings so I could trace over them on my tablet but this created more issues than it solved. I really like drawing small, so I started tracing small for all the bacteria. The problems arose when I upsized it and the lines became really blurry. I’ve tried looking up how to fix this and I’ve tried the solutions but none seem to work. If anyone has experience with this issue on Procreate, please let me know how you fixed it. For now I think I will brute force it through creating multiple layers or redrawing lines.

I did have a really nice accomplishment which was drawing a bacteriophage which I actually quite like. It was really fun to draw and mess around with the tail positions. Hopefully I can feel this inspired for gene cards. Attached are the bacteriophage and the original hand drawn concept art.

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Comments:

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    rohit_p
    Hello Jacob! I love your drawings so far! When I did some digital art before, upsizing the images when I wanted a bigger picture did ruin the resolution, so as you said, I think redrawing them in bigger sizes is probably the only solution I can think of. And about your game, have you had a chance to play with your cards yet (with your family or friends)?
    March 26, 2025 at 11:50 am - Reply
    dina_i
    Jacob, I love how you made your bacteria drawings look fun, they look like the perfect bacteria for your card game. As for the Procreate issue, I have a couple of solutions that have worked for me in the past. 1. Create a custom canvas size where you can set the width and height. I'm assuming your lines are blurry due to a low-resolution and tiny image, so set the canvas to 4000x4000 - 6000x6000 pixels for high resolution. Also, with this, adjust the DPI to around 300-600 for clearer lines. (this may be the fix to prevent it from being blurry as you upsize). 2. If you're working on a canvas already and can't restart, go to the Actions tool, the little thing that looks like a wrench, go to canvas and press Crop & Resize, then adjust the dimensions for higher res (but it's better to begin with a high res canvas if possible). I believe you can make this Layer specific, which should resolve the issue of it becoming blury when you upsize. 3. Click the icon next to the wrench (Adjustments), click Sharpen, and press Layer. You can sharpen the layer that your original image is on, and with the layer you are tracing with, you can do the same, but this time, Sharpen the Pencil. Procreate can get extremely tedious, so if this doesn't work, I'd be happy to keep experimenting with you. I hope this helps!
    March 26, 2025 at 12:02 pm - Reply
    meggiles
    Hi, Jacob! I absolutely love this rendering of the bacteriophage. I don't think I fully understood until now your real vision for the cards. Could you possibly resize this photo and orient it horizontally so it is easier for us to view? I would love to get to see more detail. I know this week you are working hard on some card prototypes; I'm very eager to see what you come up with!
    March 26, 2025 at 4:15 pm - Reply
    jacob_p
    Hello Rohit! I haven't started playing with the cards yet because I have been a little too hyperfocused on getting the artwork done before I print cards. I would like to start printing some cards this week to actually be able to see them. The environment tiles are going to be a little hard to print since they are hexagons and I'll have to mess around with spacing quite a bit so I don't waste paper. I hope to be able to play it soon because I'm really trying to lock in this week!
    March 26, 2025 at 5:02 pm - Reply
    jacob_p
    Thanks for the tips, Dina! I'll definitely try these fixes for when I do my gene cards because there are a lot of them and I do love drawing small. I accidentally came across an incredibly stupid solution of my own which is to use the fill tool with a black shade on my lines. This did take a little time though, so I will be using your much simpler solution in the future!
    March 26, 2025 at 5:09 pm - Reply
    jacob_p
    Apologies for the image, Ms. Giles. I did a scan of the paper and replaced the image, so hopefully that helps you see it better. Unfortunately, I don't think I can get any higher quality because my phone camera is terrible. I'll definitely make sure to show the digital drawings as soon as I can because the quality is much better!
    March 26, 2025 at 5:13 pm - Reply
    ashwyn_k
    As always, Jacob, I love your innovative names for your cult following of Senior Projects commenters. I just want to say that your drawings are amazing! I didn't even know you were such a great artist until the beginning of this school year, and it's great to see your art some more. I hope you don't mind if I bounce off of your response to Rohit's question, but what do you mean by "environmental tiles?" I'm not sure if you've explained this in a previous post, and if you have, I apologize. But is this game going to be a card game with a playing field made up of many hexagons where the cards interact with one another? Or did you mean that the design of the cards themselves will feature hexagonal artwork? I love seeing your progress every week. Keep up the great work!
    March 28, 2025 at 4:46 am - Reply
    jacob_p
    Hello Ashwyn. Sorry for the lack of clarity on what I mean by environment tiles. Basically they will just be cardboard hexagons that players bring along with their gene decks and bacteria cards. They will serve as the tiles that create a board for players to move their colonies through. Most of the action on the board will be through tokens and players will have their own space to arrange their cards.
    March 31, 2025 at 9:19 am - Reply

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