brushes in photoshop and painter + anatomy

hi

hope this is the right place to ask.

I’ve bought a pen device, just a genius m712, it’s a fine tablet for me.(I’ve never used wacom, nor can I really afford it.)

I would just like to know, from any of you here who use tablets and such to produce 2d concept art, what your favourite brush settings are for sketching and painting (‘inking’)?

I know the effect you are trying to achieve, software or even personal preference allows
for a wide gamut… but I was hoping from the replies I could get a more or less generalised idea of what people here use.

One other question would be about human anatomy, I know observation is the artists way, but especially in this forum and where concept art is concerned one often has to imagine new / potentially alien or exotic forms or combinations of shapes. Even when dealing with creating a bipedal creature.So I was wondering what you (any of you) have experienced as a sort of epithany in the “way of drawing creatures and people”. If that makes any sense at all.

I only ever use a hard edged brush and adjust the flow and opacity depending on what i’m doing. I normally set a basic color pallet down and and just sample from that.
Many 2d illustrators use apps like make human to set out basic poses for characters and then do paint overs.
Combine photos of animals and humans using layers and blending modes followed by a paint-over is also a good way to come up with an interesting creature.
Sometimes just making random scribbles, copying half the image, duplicating it, flipping it horizontally and aligning back the two halves so you have a central line of symmetry can result in happy accidents. With a little imagination you can often see forms jump out at you that are the basis for a good creature design.
There is some experimental software available written in java that does this, it’s designed to take your brain out of the equation, there’s no undo built in deliberately for that reason. Here’s the link http://al.chemy.org/

Just came across these character concept art tutorials on youtube by daarken, well worth a look.
http://www.youtube.com/daarken