Party Art

DarkMagus

Oh no! Rase is trying to lure me to the dark side... wait... Aren't I already on the dark side, I mean it is part of my name and all. Hmm....

Everdark

*Looks at Rase* Whatever it was, I didn't do it.

Duskreign

Thanks, Dyluth!

RaseCidraen

Sure you didn't do it! Nobody ever does anything. It's truly a wonder things get done around these parts :)

Everdark

I wouldn't know. It wasn't me, Rase. ;)

Duskreign

I finished "Anai Aran":http://cdn.obsidianportal.com/assets/31823/Anai1.jpg

Still debating color or grayscale shading for the character art for The System.

Also, started paint-work on my character for Dark Queen of the West, "Detective Simon Cruz, CPD-SID":http://cdn.obsidianportal.com/assets/31822/Simon_WIP1.jpg Thanks, hugely, to Arsheesh for inspiring me to go this route instead of my usual, less formal coloring style. He's looking pretty snazzy so far, I think.

Everdark

Dusk, Mr. Cruz looks freakin' sweet so far.

I need to start painting now... Lol.

arsheesh

That is looking fantastic Dusk! There's allot of character built into Cruz: his expression, hair and un-tucked white tailored suit give him the persona of being professional yet with a lighter side. Nice job on the skin tones and the shading, it looks really good.

The only thing I could even think of in terms of feedback would be a tip that I picked up while researching how to paint: always remember where your light source is coming from, and determine contrast and shading accordingly. Based on the shadows coming from Cruz's neckline, it looks as if your light source is coming from the top left. Based on that, it seems that the right side of his face ought to be slightly more darkly shaded, particularly near the nose, jawline, and far left side of his face. Course this is really a small detail and the image looks great as is. I am excited to see this piece develop bud.

@SHIN: "One of us, one of us..."

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

Duskreign

Yeah, Sheesh. I decided on the light source just as I was about to call it a night. I started with the neck to remind me what I was up to. He's going to be standing in a police interrogation room with a ceiling pendant light above him and to his right (viewer left). I'm going to do a lot of the shadows in post-processing, but you're right. I should still bring those shadows onto his face.

DarkMagus

You too Dusk? How many people put THAT many skill points into art anyways? You guys are all amazing! I don't know how you can make a computer generated painting look so realistic... I'm going to go color my giant spongebob coloring book now...

Duskreign

You can get the spongy bits to really look like spongy bits if you draw faint, light gray dots around the edges and corners of Spongebob. Make the dots nearest the edges slightly darker and smaller, the dots moving into the wider areas a little bigger and a whole lot lighter. Then, cover the whole thing in yellow.

And don't forget to remember where your light source is!

Don't mess this up, Magus. Squarepants is serious business.

Everdark

Lmao @ Arsheesh.

ONE OF US! ONE OF US!

Duskreign

Vin is really into 'belonging.' I think that's a trait we can all appreciate.

DarkMagus

Vin, you should meet my friends the Borg. hahaha

Duskreign

He'd assimilate THEM!

DarkMagus

0.o

Duskreign

Yeah.

Duskreign

"Did some more work on Det. Cruz.":http://cdn.obsidianportal.com/assets/31899/Simon.jpg

The shading is in-progress. I know it doesn't look right yet.

Everdark

I assimilate all over the place. Constantly.

RaseCidraen

Ugh... trust me, you don't want to be near Shin when he's assimilating. Its impossible to get out of the carpet.

I'm now imagining a Serious Squarepants sequel to Serious Sam.

arsheesh

It's coming together nicely Dusk. I am constantly impressed by how quickly you are able to produce quality work. Out of curiosity, do you use a tablet to sketch your characters, or do you draw them by hand and then scan them to your computer to work on in PS? I ask because right now I'm doing the latter. I tried sketching something using my mouse pad (can't afford a tablet at the moment) and it turned out horrible. However I don't know how to improve the resolution on a scanned image? Any ideas?

Duskreign

Thanks, Arsheesh. I was very distracted last night, partly because I was drawing something for Gaaran, and partly because I didn't want to miss the eclipse. I might have gotten the suit jacket and pants done otherwise.

I go back and forth on how I sketch my characters. Cruz here was originally sketched with ballpoint pen on paper, as was Squidgirl and my original sketch of the Metroid character in The System. However, most of the time, I do all my work on a convertible "tablet PC like this.":http://www.bhphotovideo.com/images/images345x345/735629.jpg It may be worth noting that even when I sketch on paper and scan it in, I make a transparent layer above it, trace over my original lines digitally, and erase the sketch, then create a new layer, positioning it underneath my line art, and do all my color work there. However, I am going with an overpaint approach with Det. Cruz. I want the finshed piece to be lineless, and to be closer to photorealism.

Sketching with a mouse is very challenging. I can do it, but it is tedious and frustrating work, and you wind up settling for less quality than you want to, just to be able to call it done.

When it comes to improving a scanned image, most scanning software has the option to set the ppi. However, no matter what you do, your lines will be as thick as they are. You can't really get as thin or consistent a line with a pen or pencil as you can digitally. Then again, artistically, such consistency can be to the detriment of the piece.

arsheesh

Thanks for the tip. I didn't realize you could adjust the ppi of a scanned image (guess I need to pay closer attention). That makes my decision allot easier. I don't mind thicker sketch lines, I'll just be painting over them any way. So, given how sad my mouse sketch turned out, I think I'll stick with the traditional method of sketching for now.

gaaran

A couple tricks that I picked up on online, for clean lines (if you're not using a tablet), are one, to scan your sketch, reprint it in cyan, ink it with a solid black, then rescan it, removing the blue. another one is in photoshop (i'm not sure, but I think gimp has something similar) on the channels tab, select load channel as selection, then delete it (this will remove all the white, so be sure you're not on the background, you want transparency), then, with the transparency locked, paint over the lines in a solid black. You'll have perfectly solid black lines on a transparent layer. Viola! I used the second method on dusk's lineart to start my painting :).