Hello from Nicole from "Tuesdays with Nicole"

calabacita

I like your solution to the pricing for magic items gnunn :) Also, I really like your avatar drawing-I like the line quality and he has so much character!

Jim: your art piece is looking pretty good too! I would make the walls in the back darker if you can, since they're farther away; it would make your character stand out more too. Oh yeah, and coloring takes FOR-EV-ER, which is why I usually stick to greyscale with all my illustrations unless I know I have time to color them.

And about tablets: if you're looking for a cheap on that gets the job done, I'd go with gnunn's recommendation. I haven't tried the Genius brand but I'm assuming they're probably the same quality and layout as Wacom's Bamboo collection. I use an Intuos 3 because I LOVE the customizing buttons feature. It's not necessary for drawing, but it helps my workflow and helps me quickly render sketches (like for the videos). It takes a little getting used to when starting because there's the disconnect from drawing on the tablet and what appears on the screen, but practice helps with that.

I also use LOADS of reference before starting (hmmm, I may even talk about that this week) from books, pictures and other sites. For human-type poses, posemaniacs.com is pretty good. They don't have too dynamic poses but each pose can be rotated 360 degrees which helps a lot when I don't know how the human body looks from a certain angle. I recently checked out: (http://www.amazon.com/Fantasy-Figure-Artists-Reference-CD-ROM/dp/0764179616) The Fantasy Figure Artist's Reference book which is awesome for rpg character drawings and such.