[X] My Assistant

Hello, I've been here for a few months, been around chatting with my friend MSimm and thought I'd post up a pic or two of my artwork. Figured I'd start with posting, in my opinion, with my best drawing so far. Hope everyone likes it.




This post has been edited by Mortimus: May 2 2013, 09:49

Not bad at all, welcome to the artist section ^^

Thanks, I do what I can with photoshop which isn't much. lol. I really need to learn how to make better use of it.

Friend of mine on Deviant Art wanted a pic of Kiyone stretching so I gave him this. Hope you like it.



This post has been edited by Mortimus: May 13 2013, 08:18

Seems that your line-art needs more work, nice body shape though.

Thanks for the feedback, been attempting to draw for what is getting close to being 10 years, I draw on paper, scan it then try to trace over the lines in photoshop using my mouse, I have a stylus, but it sucks I have to press down on it just to get it to start a little bit of a line and it's hard to keep lines at same width.

- Paint Tool SAI, dude.
- You can use the pen tool too, this guy speaks highly of it.

I don't have SAI and I tried to use the pen tool a couple of times, but it keeps making new layers each time I use it and I don't want it getting huge file size. I know there's a trick to getting around that, but I don't know it. I don't know how to use a lot of photoshop.

Ah, ok, then.

Wow not bad, i like it. did you use tablet/wacom?

Wow not bad, i like it. did you use tablet/wacom?

No, I have a tablet, but it's cheap crap and I don't use it, so I just use mouse and keyboard to do my artwork. I draw on paper first then scan it and go over the lines in photoshop. Thought I'd share a funny pic I did while back. I thought it would be funny to see reactions to everyone if in the onsen episode of Tenchi Muyo, Ryoko just randomly springs a dick. This pic is a year old.

your artwork was cool i love it

your artwork was cool wink.gif i love it smile.gif


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Thank you very much, I'm still working on more stuff. I'll eventually post more of my stuff on here, but those two pics I'm comfortable with sharing here.

I like that first image!

I like that first image!

Thanks, I'm glad you like it, that's my favorite picture that I've made so far, I do a few pics of Ryoko and Washu from the anime Tenchi Muyo. They're my two favorite anime girls from that series and it was the first anime series I watched.

Hey, had a question about coloring pictures, I've always noticed that professionally done pics have several different color tones to skin and I was wondering how they do that. Do they use multiple layers with various opacity settings on them or what?

Ok, I'm currently working on three different pics, but I'm going to be away for a couple of weeks. So bumping up my topic, so it won't get too buried in the forums.

I guess this reply will be here whenever you get back, hah.

Friend of mine on Deviant Art wanted a pic of Kiyone stretching so I gave him this. Hope you like it.

First off, you are very good at knowing where to put shading and shine on your images (this one being the example). Also, when it comes to shine, you know how much to put on, which is something a lot of people struggle with. If you were to do a different form of shading besides cell-shading, then the amount of shine you have would look fantastic (it looks fine with cell-shading, too.)

...I have a stylus, but it sucks I have to press down on it just to get it to start a little bit of a line and it's hard to keep lines at same width.

Yeah, that's a bit of a problem (and insanely annoying) that your stylus doesn't react to pressure very well. However, dont worry too much about keeping line art the same width. The colour in the picture will often make it hard to notice (especially if you use coloured line-art. That takes more time, but it's easier to make the line blend in with the colours.) But, if the stylus is making the lines drastically varied in size, then that might be too much of a problem. A line going from like 2 to 5 pixels is fine, but any difference too big wouldn't really work.

- Paint Tool SAI, dude.
- You can use the pen tool too...

SAI's pretty good, but Photoshop is my weapon of choice and the one I'd recommend (specifically, CS3, but later ones are somewhat better - albeit their UI is horrid to look at. CS3 has a nice blue-grey interface.)
As for the pen tool, meh, it can be very useful, especially when you're using your mouse instead of a stylus. But it doesn't allow for some of the more intricate things you might want to make (and it's quite difficult to make things proportional, like circles or, as I was recently trying to make, a cross similar to the teutonic-looking one in the corner of the Reich war flags).

Hey, had a question about coloring pictures, I've always noticed that professionally done pics have several different color tones to skin and I was wondering how they do that. Do they use multiple layers with various opacity settings on them or what?

Oohoohoo, now this is something fun! With colouring both the skin and clothing, there are special tricks you can do (and these will be with Photoshop CS3, though earlier/later versions most definitely have these options.)
Just out of curiosity, what Photoshop are you using?
I dont know how well I can explain this, but I'll give it my best shot!
Anyway, if you notice, at the top of the layers box, there is a little drop-down box that says "normal" in it, normally. Let's take a base skin-tone colour, like 254,238,224 (RGB), and make it the base skin layer.
Now for the shadow: create a new layer and you can change it's mode from "normal" to "multiply" or "darken" ("multiply" is stronger), and then you can pick pretty much any colour that doesn't necessarily have to be darker than the base skin tone -but that isn't white or near-white- and photoshop will automatically make it darker than the colours on the layers below it while combining the colours. It's not necessary, though, with shading skin. Multiply and Darken really work best when used with shades of grey, and that's fine with skin. They also work when shading things where you'd want multiple diverse colours, like a green shirt that has blue shadows or something. But for shading skin with different colours, it's perfectly fine to leave the layer in Normal mode and just manually pick the colours you want.
With keeping "inside the lines", as it were, right click on the shadow layer and choose "create clipping mask". That will bind the shadow layer to the one under it (which should be the base skin layer). Any layer above the bound shadow layer that you also use "create clipping mask" on will be bound to the base skin layer along with the shadow layer. Convenient. Now, if you do decide to use Multiply or Darken, then picking a shade of light grey would be best. Just experiment and see what you think works. If you're using the Normal layer mode, then a good shadow colour for the base one I gave above would be around 187,132,133. If you want a more smooth shadow, then the blur tool or the "gradient blur" filter option are pretty good. The blur tool is the better option if you want to have only parts of the shadow blurred, while other parts are more sharp (like how Avatar: The Promis/The Search use shadows), which it seems you have a pretty good grasp on, but I'll just add this anyway.
For blush: Pick a more red colour, like 250,151,152, then paint that onto a new blush layer (clipping masked as well) above the shadow one, most likely using the Multiply layer mode. Then just blur away until you get what you want (gradient blur in the filters menu works best for this type of stuff.) And you can have multiple shadow and blush layers, as they'll work together well, especially if they have different layer modes.
For shine: This is another one where the layer modes come in handy. The layer modes to use here are "Overlay", "Screen", or any of the ones that end in "... Light". They make whatever colour you're using (so long as it's not black or near-black) subtract from how dark the layers below it are. If you use a Normal layer mode on the shadows layer, then you could have a shine layer under that that wont interfere with the shadow (allowing you to shine small parts that are otherwise surrounded by shadow) (if your shadow layer was done with the Multiply or Darken modes, then some crazy stuff will happen if you have a layer below it that uses different colours.) Anyway, regardless of interfering with other layers, if the shine layer is on top, then there's nothing to worry about. The shine you can literally make any colour you want if you feel that colour should be reflected off of the surface of the skin (or other thing you're colouring). Especially while using "Overlay" mode, the colour will interact nicely with the base, blush, and shadow layers under it, no matter what colour you pick (most of the time, haha).
I have no idea how much of that was explained well (if any of it at all), but it's midnight where I am, and I'm trying my best, haha. If you have any questions, just ask. I'll hopefully check this thread again once you get back.

This post has been edited by Lord Paracelsus: Aug 19 2013, 10:07

All the proportions look great, the eyes arent misaligned, use of colors look good. Only thing I would work on is the background, the background seems lined nicely is that term? Instead of using the solid gray color for folds would a gradient tool work better there? Or would it detract from the main focus of the work?

In my opinion the shape of the face needs to be more aligned (the eyes are unaligned), and use a vectors for your linework to make everything much smoother. Same with shading, work on your tablet skills the lead factor to make a smoother brush; have separate layers for and airbrush then ink pen highlight. The shadows are too rough and need to be smoothed out using a blur tool. However, keep up the good work, considering you did this with a mouse.