Lousy_Day

I haven't told Comrade Hero yet, but I am about halfway through a gift art for him. I am actually completely redoing a piece I did back in 2008. There were so many things wrong with it that it made more sense to start over rather than try to fix everything. If he wants to see the progress, I will post them here. If he wants to be surprised, I will wait till it is finished, which hopefully will be by Sunday.

I realized there is really no need for me to keep my fanart battle entries secret until I am finished. By sharing the progress, I will know if my entry does not meet the requirements before it is too late, and also be able to incorporate ideas from others that I may never have thought of, which would make the final piece better. Also making it a habit to show WIPs would help avoid waiting till the last minute to get something in.

I was going to do wrath for this month, but I got a new idea for envy out of nowhere today.

Title: Envy
Synopses: It takes place at a gas station for aircrafts. In the foreground, you see a longbow warden refueling his beat up chaser. It is in a pretty bad shape, cracked windshield, duct taped panels, rust, etc. (Note the model number for his chaser is INVU.) As he begins to wipe bugs off the windshield, he sees a big shiny arachnos flyer land next to him. Even the sound of its fancy door opening has luxury written all over it. Out comes a happy and maybe slightly drunk arachnos agent accompanied by a hot chick. Warden lets out a sigh and begins to wonder what has gone wrong with his life.

Inspiration/references:




Rough sketch:

I decided to start a new thread to post anything I do that is CoH related. I believe as fellow players of the game, people on this forum will be able to give valuable feedback I won't be able to get elsewhere. I will be posting polished works as well as WIPs and quicker sketches. I am pretty open to suggestions and critique. If you guys notice things that could be improved or simply suck, please don't hesitate to let me know.

Actually, upon further experiment it seems that simply using the glow brush in screen layer mode without filling it with black gives the same result. I guess screen is the perfect blending mode for the glow brush, since it won't make the image darker.

It still seems like a good idea to fill it with black even if there are no visual differences. When it is filled with black, if you change the blending mode to default it is very easy to check where you used glow brush.

I dropped by last night while I was leveling up my demon MM, and I just wanted to personally thank Suichiro for sharing a neat trick of using Screen layer mode filled with black to add lighting.

I like the glow brush in Painter a lot, but one thing that has prevented me from using it much is that if you use the brush on transparent pixels, or if the base color you are using the brush on is not dark enough, the brush will introduce ugly dark colors before it gets glowy.

I just tested glow brush on a black screen layer, and it does exactly what I want it to without undesirable side effects! Better yet, I don't have to worry about permanently altering my base image anymore. I think I will be using this a lot to add incidental lighting.

It won't be moot if Johnny turns in a masterpiece in May and you see some voters saying, "what Johnny did is amazing, but since he has had immunity for two months in a row..." I am not trying to make a big issue out of this, or even trying to change people's behavior when they vote. I am just saying this kind of negative reinforcement (telling people they are not getting votes because they have immunity) could have a negative impact on the artist's motivation sooner or later.

Congrats once again, JohnnyKat! That was super close. I was personally watching the bottom three more closely. Thanks to those who still kept me in this thing to get eliminated another month.

(Speaking from past experiences, I am with Johnny that it is a little disappointing when people say they are voting for another piece because you have immunity. I mean it is all fine if that is what they want to do, but stating that as rational reasoning is discouraging to the artist who has immunity, especially when they are still giving it their best effort like Johnny did this month. Immunity should only matter when the person who has it actually ends up with the lowest points, which I am not sure ever happened in the last couple of years. If immunity gives the artist an unfair disadvantage, it does more harm than good.)

I am not sure if this is a counter example to Boris, but I would like to mention Gil Elvgren, one of my new favorite artists. (Pino is the other one.) Elvgren worked extensively with references, too. Here you can see some comparisons of his references and final paintings:

http://underpaintings.blogspot.com/2...l-elvgren.html

Although he copies his references closely, he isn't cheating or stealing because he shoots his own photos and pays his models. What I really admire about Elvgren is that he really knew how to make his painting better than his references. The same can be said about Andrew Loomis as well. So many artists copying from photo references only hope to be as good as photographs, and I have been guilty of this.

There are numerous examples on DA where someone would post a photorealistic study, and everyone comments they thought it was a photo and the artist would be all flattered. As amazing as their technical execution might be, this doesn't really involve making creative artistic decisions. I think Loomis said in Creative Illustration that he didn't take it as a compliment if someone told him his painting looked just like a photo. I think copying references exactly has its place when developing basic observational skills. But to grow and progress further as an artist, I believe he or she should learn to make critical decisions on their own.

Btw, the swiping link Juggurtha posted was really interesting. Is that something accepted as the norm in the comic industry, or do people still poke fun when they get busted swiping like that even if there are no legal consequences? It is hard for me to imagine a comic artist who swipes and fails to conceal their original source all the time having a good reputation among other artists. If I were a comic artist, I would aspire to be the one that gets swiped often, because that would really say something about your creative skills.

I should do penguins every month?

Are damage bonuses hit by DR? If so, how much? I usually try to get 30% or more with assault on. Thanks!

Hehe, now Suichiro has me confused too.

Not taking any sides, but I would like to follow up on my last question. I think everyone agrees that it is ok to copy references for educational purposes. What art communities do you guys go to to show these kind of studies and get feedback from other artists? I know it can be a sensitive issue even when you are only copying it for educational reasons, because if you do a "study" after an artist living today and post it everywhere, the original artist may not appreciate that.

Two places I know of are CGSociety and Conceptart.org. Are there other ones that don't gravitate toward one particular style? I really like CGSociety, but the sketchbook section there seems to have really slowed down in the last couple of years. Conceptart.org seems to have too much activity, on the other hand. I don't have a sketchbook thread there because of that. I noticed on Conceptart that unless you are one of the few amazing artists, your sketchbook gets little attention, which is understandable given the sheer number of sketchbooks there. And if you are one of those few amazing artists, you are swarmed with praises, not much unlike on DA. I guess I am looking for a happy medium where it is easy to get meaningful feedback from a number of people and also be able to keep up with what other people are doing.

How do you feel about people posting personal studies and experiments (master copies, photo studies, scenes from movies, etc) on DA? People seem to use DA very differently, from those who use it like a portfolio to only showcase the best of their works, to those who post every little sketch they do. I guess I've been using it not much differently than sketchbook threads on art forums, where I wouldn't post total crap but still show things that are not polished or studies that I wouldn't consider my own work.

For me, studying from photographs as well as life is a regular routine, since my foundations are far from solid and my visual library pretty lacking. I did this lion study a couple of days ago, and I am not sure if I should post it on DA or not. The reference is from the cover of the book "The Soul of the Savanna" and I would mention it in the description, but I wouldn't want someone to think I am trying to pass it off as my own work. My goal wasn't necessarily to copy the photograph exactly, but to learn to depict fur expressively. I also accentuated the highlights to show the warmth of their bond.

I have posted stuff like this on DA before, though. When I did a cloud study after a photo I found on DA, I got the owner's permission before posting my study. But when I did a series of studies from the dvd of Corpse Bride, I didn't ask Tim Burton or whoever it belongs to. I guess I thought it was ok since a lot of (concept) artists do movie studies all the time. I am not sure why I am a little more hesitant this time...maybe because I want to start doing things I can call my own.

1. Frost - Looking at this puts a smile on my face. I just wish it was photographed better or adjusted in Photoshop to show the original colors more accurately.

2. U-Naught - It's funny how American Jane is sitting in that tiny chair, and little Amerikatt is totally into drawing. Kinda feels like Jane staying there was involuntary.

3. Shia - I love the clever use of overlapping to show depth.

There were so many great entries that easily could have been on my top 3, but I had to make a decision in the end.

Is this thread for posting funny videos you find on youtube?

Here's what I watched like a hundred times yesterday:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzRH3iTQPrk

Judging by the date and the number of views, everyone may have seen it already, but it was new to me.

Penguin Diva (sonic/dark corrupter) belongs to a friend, and she was originally in the Antarctic Family. We migrated some of our penguins to Freedom for Sirens PVP during the free transfers, and Diva was one of those. The new VG on that server is named The Igloo.

Looks like everyone had so much fun! I really like the ones with construction papers. Bindweed's DQ was unfortunate, but that is great stuff in its own.

I had more frustration than fun, because I was trying to use cheap dollar store crayons on black paper, and it totally sucked. My official entry is the crappy crayon version, but I wanted to have some fun too, so I went ahead and did oil pastel and digital versions as well.

Here is Penguin Diva on Antarctic Idol:

Crayon


Oil Pastel


Digital

Hey guys,

Zhuzhu is going to hold two free live painting sessions to promote his class, and the first one is tonight. Go to this link for details:

http://zhuzhu.deviantart.com/journal/31550402/

He doesn't speak English very well, but he is an amazing digital painter and very cool to watch. Check out his gallery to see how he makes everything look so easy (but is not in reality).

You can also download his Photoshop brushes here:

http://zhuzhu.deviantart.com/art/Z-P...s-V6-154905327

You need to load them as tool presets and not as a brush library. His brushes are the most usable set of custom brushes I've seen, compared to most of the junk I have downloaded out of curiosity and never use. Many of them behave eerily similar to Painter brushes, and his brushes are actually starting to make it fun for me to paint in Photoshop again. If you download his brush presets, note that three blenders will show under tool presets when you pick the smudge tool, not under brushes.

P.S. His journal is kinda confusing, but it is 8 pm EST tonight.

Well, it seems like only Jophiel knows the true origin of this character.

Congrats!

I joined the group a while ago.

A llama for you, too!

FD, in my first PM to Juggertha, I told him you might actually have a point even though you seem to make it hard not to take it personally. Like I said, the validity of your point is a separate issue from how you present your point. I don't think I (or Red) was arguing about what you said, but how you said it. What I feel uncalled for is the need to repeatedly single out Juggertha and point fingers at him in this thread. As much as I want to be neutral, it kinda has been decided for me which "side" I sympathize with. We might as well condemn everyone who downloads music and movies without paying in this thread, because it is illegal and rips off other artists. As for me, I still buy DVDs (mostly used), and since I usually don't listen to anything while working and never get tired of listening to the same old stuff I have when I do listen to music, I haven't bought a new CD in a long time.

I personally think it would have been much more informative and beneficial to everyone if you just enjoyed your vacation if you were on one, organized your thoughts and presented them in an objective manner without calling out anyone in a thread titled "Proper Use of References". If Juggertha came to that thread, got defensive and claimed that you "hate him and have this big vendetta", perhaps then I would have felt differently about this whole thing.

Does that mean I17 is going live this month? I heard April for demon summoning.

Hi TA!

Ouch, 3 jobs? I hope you find one high paying job soon.......so you can buy my art!