Just log into Facebook as you usually would…

Once you’re logged in (or if you’re already logged in to Facebook when you start the app), your friends’ pics will appear in the collage editor, and you’ll get some brief instructions on how it works.

Just click “get started” to start your collage. You can drag in your friends’ profile pictures.

Plus,  You can still search for any items on Muzy, as well. The Friend Collage app includes some pre-set searches that might be useful when you’re playing with your friends’ photos… things like hats, costumes, and jewelry. I searched for backgrounds using the pre-set background search, added a brick wall, and sent it to the back.

But feel free to search for anything that you might want to include in your collage. I searched and found a nail to help hold the pictures to the wall. I’ll have to erase some of the white around this nail.

I found some tape, too, to reinforce the corners of my friends’ pics.

I can also draw my own elements by clicking on the “Draw New Item” button. Again, it’s just like the normal collage editor… Let’s graffiti up this brick wall.

When I’m done, I can take a look at the posting options… I can add a title, a note, and tags. Concerned about using your friends’ pictures on Muzy? Your collage is automatically set up so that other people can’t use it. If you want other people to use it, you can select “Let other people use this.” You’ll definitely want to share your friend collage on Facebook, so take advantage of Muzy’s sharing feature by clicking “Share on Facebook.”

There are a number of approaches to a friend collage. You can make a “BFF” collage, declaring your friendship for the special people in your life. Or, you can take your teasing to the next level by decking out your best friend as a pirate or spaceman or victim of a shark attack. You can create a personalized birthday (or get well or thank you) card featuring your friend’s photo. Whatever you want to say visually, you can say with a friend collage.

If you click on Help, you’ll find answers to frequently asked questions on Muzy.

If you click on Tutorials, well, it will bring you to this blog. You can search for articles about Muzy by category, search term. Check out the right-hand column of the tutorials blog to find ways to search.

But what if you run into a bug or a technical problem while you’re on Muzy? If you look to the left side of the webpage on Muzy, you’ll see a tab that says “Report a Problem.” Click that tab to send a message to Muzy about your problem.

If you have more questions about Muzy, or can’t find the information you’re looking for, you can use the “Contact Us” link at the bottom of each Muzy page to send an email to Muzy HQ. Or, you can comment here, and we’ll try to help. You can also talk with Andrew on Muzy. He has his finger on the pulse of everything going on here at Muzy HQ!

The Instant frame is good for casual pictures and snapshots, and also for making wild drawings and collages look like they’re straight-out-of-the-camera. Here, I’ve used the Instant frame a bit self-reflexively, on an alien “snapshot” taped casually on a cement wall.

The next frame is the Fancy Frame. This ornate gold frame is good for works of art and formal-looking subjects. As always, it can be used with a hint of irony to frame the mundane. In this case, I’ve framed an “effected” version of an owl drawing I did. I think the gold colors on the frame go well with it.

The next frame is the Film frame. It gives an old-fashioned film slide or film negative look to your pic. This is a pretty versatile frame, and is good for snapshots and photorealistic pictures, as well as modernist art, anything using the X-Ray effect, and much more. I’ve chosen an actual film frame to put the Film frame around. Be aware that this frame (and the Instant frame) will crop your image, since the frame area is, if anything, slightly vertical.

The last frame option is the Rough Edges frame. This is a good frame for almost any artwork. It’s basic black and unobtrusive, so it looks good on anything. I’ve framed a drawing from Sketchfu that I’ve added some effects to. It gives the work a nice, finished look.

That’s all the frames in Muzy’s Effects app for now… Have fun with them!

Just click post, and you can see the video on Muzy. Look for more video options and features coming in the future!

Now let’s start captioning it. It’s easy. Just drag any of the Comic app’s text boxes or bubbles onto your image, and type what you want to say.

The Comic app has several speech and thought bubbles. There’s a rounded speech bubble, to start with. You can place the bubble anywhere you like and type in it. Drag the blue dot to move the pointer on the speech bubble to wherever you like, to show who’s talking or to point to something.

Then there’s a more squarish speech bubble. It works the same; it’s just a different style. Notice that you can move the pointer to come from the top or side instead of the bottom. Also, there’s a red “x” that appears when you have the item selected, so you can delete it if you want to.

Of course, there’s also a thought bubble to show the inner dialogue in your characters’ heads… As you extend the pointer, more “bubbles” get added. Notice that you can type on multiple lines, too, and the text area just expands to fit your text.

The last two types of text are more caption-oriented. The boxed text makes the text readable against any background. It also allows upper and lowercase letters and takes up less horizontal space.

The white shadowed text is thick to show up against the background. It’s best against dark backgrounds, where the white letters will provide the most contrast, but because of the outline and shadow, it’ll show up pretty well in most places.

I’m done with my comic and ready to post… Now it’s time for you to make one!

Ah, one does not simply publish their items anymore! There are so many options to customize and save your work before it gets released into the wild Savannah of Muzy to fend for itself. Observe the image above.

To the left is a field to type in the title of your work. From there you have the option to post it immediately as it is as well as a second option to post to Facebook, or you may save a draft if you are not quite done. Saving drafts is great for those who’s computers frequently crash, and you can always find them to the right of the Muzy homepage feed.

To the left, you’ll notice that the Options area is expandable! From here, you can:

Post to My Muzy – Or not. Decide whether or not you want this on your Muzy, displayed with the rest of your work or if you just want to release a small sketch and not combine it with your other work.

Note – Write what you think of the piece, how you made it or what the story is behind it! People often have a good time reading trivia about creations.

Add Tags – Write keywords that describe the content of your image. Think of  the words you would use if you were looking for a similar image on a search engine.

Let people reuse this – Just what it says! If the picture is too personal, you can always lock it from being tampered with this way, although it’s always good to share.

Notice there is an area to get more info. Clicking this will bring you to a page that will introduce you to Karma. Karma is a way we reward Muzy users for making useful items. On this page, you will not only get a full explanation of it, but also a tally of your most useful items. Click the image below to access that page.

Moving on. Press ‘Post’ and your image will be saved, sent to the server and posted onto Muzy.

You will be sent back to the Muzy homepage feed. The bar above will be at the very top telling you the specifics of your published work (here I decided to not display it on my Muzy.) On this bar you will have the option to edit, view and use your image in several editors, all at your fingertips! Enjoy!

One of the most difficult things for me to accept when I became interested in how to improve my drawings of people  was drawing according to a technical method. I used to draw all faces freehand with no guides, no measurements, just guesswork and memory. This is not a bad way, some use it exclusively, but it will certainly not help with consistency (or continuity) if you ever want to draw a person twice and keep them looking like themselves. I adopted a new method when I began to learn more about animation.

What is this method? Well… You start it with a circle. Draw a vertical line down the center of it – this will determine how long the face will be. Draw another line horizontally just a little below the center or the circle – This is where the bottom of the eyes rest. I very rarely use more lines than this, or it will get too complicated!

Notice in steps 4 and 5 there there is and equilateral (same length on all sides) triangle stretching from the middle of each eye into the center of the face. This will tell you where to place the nose. Eyes rest approximately one eye’s-length from each other.

Let’s try a new subject from different angles.

Start considering the ‘circle’ a sphere instead. Mark it accordingly and rotate it about. Remember that every feature of the face will change, usually subtlety with the rotation. Think in 3D! Use a mirror or camera and see how your face looks from different angles.

If you’ve already spent a lot of time drawing faces, this method may take a little while to adjust to your own tastes, but you will no doubt find it very useful, even if only to start putting marks on a blank piece of paper. Drawing this way will also help you keep things to scale so your drawing does not run off the page. It will aid you as you figure out proportions and put features in the right place. It may even help you draw people you know and imaginary characters to look unique rather than all the same.

may be by 1918underwood

Muzy’s Stretch app is fun for making distorted pictures of your friends and enemies, but that’s hardly its only use. The Stretch app can create fascinating artistic effects as well and can be used with drawings and collage with equal success as photos.

The image to the left is one I drew on Muzy when I was apparently feeling like some bright and cheery colors. One of the things that makes this image a good one for Stretch is the high contrast. It has distinct areas of color, and so the shape of those areas can be easily manipulated with the stretch tool. I’ve stretched out the figure into a larger head and heart-shaped body, and stretched the dots into elongated shapes.

center by 1918underwood

Here’s another image that I uploaded to Muzy off of Sketchfu. It’s got similar qualities: A high contrast and distinct shapes that can be manipulated.

Because this image is from Sketchfu, its dimensions don’t match Muzy’s canvas size. I started out pulling the edges of the picture outwards, to fill the canvas. While doing that, I discovered that it made some interesting shapes. I considered the possibility of pulling the left and right edges out and down, creating the visual effect of the figure being at the end of a long hallway.

However, I wanted to drag around the center figure a bit, so that it became more of a swirl than a person. I ended up creating a curve of white in one corner of the image only, and swirling the central figure into an abstract shape.

sunflower by 1918underwood

Here’s another high-contrast image that I drew on Muzy. It’s a slightly abstracted sunflower. I decided to reshape it into a bird, by pulling the petals outward at different locations to create wings and a tail.

I also manipulated the center of the flower, stretching it downwards to create a more bird-like shape, and I turned the upper portion of the flower into a head, bulging it into a more circular shape.

The final result utilizes the shape of the petals, while distorting the overall shape of the flower.

blue by 1918underwood

The next image I manipulated is a blue face. The face is pretty simplistic, just bare planes shaded in with dots.

Just like the face of a friend, I can distort this face’s shape. I manipulated each portion of the face: forehead, nose and cheeks, chin. By changing the shapes, I made a much more abstract and distorted face.

The stretching of the face also stretches out the texture of the areas, making the dots look more like elongated brush strokes, and giving a more painterly effect.

Jellys! by Khreaper. Click to view.

Here’s something a little different. This image is a photograph uploaded by Khreaper of some lovely jellyfish. They make a nice abstract pattern.

Like my Sketchfu drawing “center,” this jellyfish picture isn’t the same size as the Muzy canvas. That makes it easy to push around the shapes out the outer edges.

I manipulated this into a figure in profile. The jellyfish become abstract elements within the silhouette of the profile. Beware that there’s a limit to how far you can push any particular edge.

black-and-white to color by 1918underwood

Next, I manipulated this image, which was a Muzy drawing that I’d colored and framed in the Effects app. I again played around with the edges, creating a wavy, distorted effect.

I also elongated Tony Perkins’ face, creating an even more evil expression. I pulled up the triangles in his hairline and pulled down his chin a little bit, and in that orangy-red color, he begins to look terribly devilish.

Again, these techniques are very much like ones you’d use to manipulate a photo of your friend. The facial expression can be altered by moving, stretching, and resizing parts of the face.

owl, uploaded by 1918underwood

Here’s another photo, an image of an owl that I uploaded to Muzy. This one has a patterned fence in the background. I decided that I wanted to manipulate the image and started playing with it to see what I could do.

First, I widened the image by pulling the left and right side out as far as they would go. Because there is a limit to how far you can pull part of the picture, this creates straight edges on both sides, just moved further out.

By stretching out circular areas, and distorting other parts of the image into waves, I created a lot of patterns. The fence is especially effective, I think. The lines of the fence are no longer straight up-and-down. They take on the shape of how the image was stretched.

I minimized the owl in the picture, stretching it, thinning it, and distorting it. The owl is hardly recognizable in the finished piece. This becomes not an image of an owl, but an abstract image of patterns.

Well, there are some examples of how you can use Stretch for artistic effects. Feel free to add links to your artistic Muzy stretches in the comments below!

I chose this picture for the Blurry effect because Chaplin is pretty much in the center of the photo.

The Blurry effect focuses you in on the center of the photo by blurring the outer areas, in a kind of zoom effect.

The outer edges are most affected, and the blur focuses you on the center of the picture.

A single application of Blurry doesn’t have a severe effect. You can exaggerate the effect by applying it multiple times.

Multiple Blurry effects exaggerate the zoom. It also makes the center of the image seem larger, so Chaplin's a lot more prominent. His face isn't dead-center, though, and it gets a little blurred with each application.

Let’s see how Blurry effects look on some different images. Here’s a bat that I drew on Sketchfu with the zoom applied.

This bat is pretty central in the image, so the Blurry effect highlights it. There isn't a lot of contrast in the background, though, so the blurring isn't as accentuated as it might be.

Here’s a picture of my dog, George. (I wouldn’t want him to get jealous that I used Chaplin’s picture and not his.) You can see here that if your image is off-center, the blurring effect changes the focus of the picture. Normally the focus would be George’s face… but now it’s blurred.

Because George is not in the center of the image, his face gets blurred and the focus is on the wrong area of the image.

Now let’s look at an image that has a center point near the actual center of the image, and has clearly defined areas expanding outward from the center… This eye works pretty well with zoom.

This image is not exactly centered, but it's pretty close. The composition works with the zoom pretty well, focusing attention on the iris of the eye.

The following image has a centered main object. It’s a little big, so it gets blurry around the edges. Often the head of a figure is more in the top of the frame, so it gets blurred.

Here's another picture where the main object is pretty well centered. The Blurry effect gives him a magical quality, I think.

You can also use Blurry with more abstract images. Here’s an image with no focus at all… It’s entirely uniform. The Blurry effect shows up very well in this situation and gives the image a focus.

Since the original image is entirely uniform, the Blurry effect works a little differently here. Instead of exaggerating the exisiting focus of the image, a focal point is created at the center of the blur.

Here’s another abstract image… since the focus is dead-center already, it seems almost made for Blurry.

Because this image has a clear center, right in the middle of the frame, it's almost tailor-made for Blurry.

That’s a quick tour of the Blurry effect! Now it’s your turn to go blur up your favorite images.

Images of sunrises are often mistaken for sunsets.

Every few hours, your outdoor surroundings will turn slightly different colors. You can thank the sun for the light that make color possible in our world in the first place the Earth’s turning for making it change with time. Bit by bit, your pink and purple sunrise will turn into a light blue morning, brightening as the day goes on, casting shadows until the sun can only peek at you over some mountains… Then it will melt into the ground like butter, leaving a couple clouds to remember  where it was and give way to the moon, dousing it’s fiery colors with soft purple and deep blue.

The moon in broad daylight!

And let’s not forget the twinkly stars. They can show up quite early, still visible during the sunrise and appearing before the sun has even completely set. Very bright ones can even appear in broad daylight, as can the moon. Planets can do this as well! They’re very bright.  Just because the sun comes out does not mean the stars go elsewhere – you just can’t see them well during the daytime.

Check out how different the lighting looks in these two creations from Babsblueeyes and Cooperweb:

The left scene is lit by the morning sun while the right scene appears to be lit by a flashlight or headlights (but certainly not the moon). The foliage on the left is bright and is even reflecting a little bit of purple around the edges while the pond reflects the blue sky. The grass on the right, situated out of the light source, is dark and shadowy and the trees are silhouettes. Notice the extreme contrast between the two skies.

The back of these rocks are casting dark shadows because of the sun's position.

When the sun is not directly overhead (at noon), it causes shadows to shorten in the morning or lengthen in the evening. You may notice that one side of your house is sunny during the first half of the day and then the light progresses to the other side of your house and leaves it in shadow during the second half. It does the same thing to rocks, trees, and even you, although I don’t suggest standing in one place all day to see it in action. This is another factor that alters the color of your surroundings as the day goes on. The sun does not move – it’s the earth that rotates and orbits around it that causes night and day, shadows and light.

I used a painting as reference for this. Photos are difficult to take in the dark.

Recognizing and remembering all the changing colors in your everyday life is impossible. Taking photos and using them for reference is super handy, although if you have the access and material, painting on location is even better.

No two sunrises or sunsets are alike, but don’t worry! Any little interesting bit you can remember of each  you see will help you draw them. When I try and remember colors I see in the sky or around me, I study them and match them to a felt-tip marker color I have at home. Try it with objects familiar to you and have fun changing colors in your drawings!