SagittaryGold

Yay! Now you can draw goofy mustaches on pictures a lot easier. Or maybe that's what I do with my tablet...

Hey, happy birthday Arctic

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Well, I know what game I wish they were working on: an RTS or turn-based strategy game based on famous large scale battles from the world of CoH. WWII battles and the Rikti War with all of the heroes, villains and aliens duking it out on a huge RTS map version of Paragon City would be so excellent.

A boy can dream can't he?

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Huh, that might be kinda interesting, depending on how it was set up.

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I guess it depends on what style you want to go for. Realistic, or cell shaded/animated type. Cross hatching can be used to great effect, as can the thin white outlines. Really depends what you're going for. You just want to 'indicate' things, you don't have to fully define them. The human eye is very good at reading these visual 'tricks' and filling in the details.

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Also depends on the style of cross hatching. You can use it heavily or sparcely in a piece and the effects can be very different. It can be as simple as a few lines sticking out of a chunk of solid black or it can criss crossing lines. A little cross hatching on a leg versus an entire background for instance. A little light cross hatching can be used next to solid black to make a sort of gradiant and that may be all you want (on a leg in half shadow for example). A solid black background of stars looks different and feels different if it's a background of stars with the black cross hatched in in patchs. Some comic artists still use cross hatching subtle even with computer coloring these days. And of course most probably know traditional art (Frank Cho for instance is awesome with just cross hatching and a pen).

Edit for examples:

http://www.alandavis-comicart.com/si...er-586x630.jpg <- Look at Britain's armpit and legs. Basically cross hatching but very sparce. Still, it gives a better sense of a slight shadow/curve than had it been a solid black.

http://www.musial.org/comicart/faq/images/xmen136.jpg <- Which isn't to say solid black doesn't work too. Here, it's used not just to show the mood, but also gives Jean's costume a shiny look.

Also, depending on what kind of look you're going for pressure and thus how light your strokes are and how much you like/can smudge can work to great effect too. Prime example I can think of is Jay Anacleto - see http://www.haberlin.com/images/penci...to/image01.jpg which is actually one of his not so good pictures and doesn't to a lot to show off his range with the pencil or the complexity and subtly he can pull off.

Depending on your taste, you can also use cross hatching to great effect to simulate non-blacks and whites and to add variation that you can't do with solids. Different types of cross catching and layering of cross hatching can also form to make shades of near black or to suggest curves and surfaces that aren't there.

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Im defintly going to come
But what time will it start in Central time (I suck at time conversions)

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8 EST -> 7 Central - > 6 Mountain - > 5 Pacific. Unless you're in Arizona which doesn't observe daylight savings in which case, Az can be eitehr Mountain or Pacific depending on the time of year.

Ebay, Craigslist, and Wacom themselves all have tablets, new and used/refurbished.

Used or new?

For the record, you'd be doing what is called a relief. The inverse of it (etching into rather than sticking out of) would be called a bas-relief.

Wooot, happy birthday, Plasma!

Ha, cute. Very nice.

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You have a nice house.....

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You say that like you're gonna rob it.

Now you just need to dress up as Jack In Irons and scare all the trick or treators (or, if their parents are COH players, a little chuckle). Maybe ink up batchs of cotton balls and get fake skeleton hands to be Unseelie.

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I'm getting veklempt.

Talk amongst yourselves. I'll give you a topic; the Holy Roman Empire was neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.

Discuss.

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Funny, someone just had that line on one of their takes in dailies this morning. Bizarre...

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Its especially funny though <,< cause its true!

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Yeah, if you want the real successor to the Roman Empire, that'd probably be the Byzantines.

Don't take this the wrong way, DJ, cause you know I respect you and your work very highly, but I don't think this is one of your better pieces. It lacks a certain touch, I think, making it seem ordinary compared to other pieces you've done.

Happy b-day! Yay~

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Thanks everyone. I'm not a technophile in the least. All I know is that the Raid Drivers are supposedly the ones that caused the problem, and that as of now, they've eaten themselves utterly due to whatever reason they did such. Computers and I have a love and hate relationship. I'll let folks know how things turn out as the develop. After I finish up with Rowr's painting, I'll try to load my scanner onto my laptop so I can scan at least with this machine.

Again thanks for all the advice and support. You guys are great

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Just the drivers? Well, your files are probably fine then assuming both (or however many) of your HDs are also intact and working. RAID5 offers a level of redundancy so even if one drive fails, there's enough data and parity for the RAID controller to rebuild it all. So if your backup/second HD is okay, you should be able to recover your stuff. 'course, not knowing the specifics, I can't say much.

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"...I know dj has posted this stuff before, but wanted to know how others approached this..."

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D'OH! I can't chime in?

*goes to sit in a corner*

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*offers dunce cap?*

Sorry to hear that With Raid5, if only one drive failed, you should be reasonably okay and recover most of your stuff. And nice avatar.

Avoid black; as Rowr said, use dark blues (or dark colors in general like dark browns) as even very slight variations in dark shades will be picked up by the human eye. I'd also recomend not trying to do every strand but 'clumps' and only strands as needed to add flavor and a little realism - like a few strands to suggest wind or across the face. I'd also try using lots and lots of layers - paint, and repaint and repaint again using progressively smaller brushes to get a more layered look.

Nice pictures. But does it mean I've been hanging around the computer too much when my first thought was "New screenshots from the latest Sims expansion?" and then "Wow, that's a really white dog... looks like it got photoshopped into the picture." :P *needs a pet, surely*

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One biiiig thing I've learned about shading from playing around in paintshop pro is to not be afraid of color. Don't just shade in gray, use blues and purples, or even reds to shade. It REALLY makes things pop. Since I got Dammit the Graphire 3 I haven't shaded a single thing in flat gray and I think it makes a HUGE difference.

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Pretty much. Shadows are not black and that's really important to understand. You will get better shadows by avoiding black and instead using dark shades.

In general though I would say to find a book or take a class as the easiest way. Some of the other folks can suggest ones. But you should also learn perspective, 3d space, foreshortening, and anatomy if you're doing organic things because shading and shadow does affect and is affected by these things.

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Hence the "Grammar FTW"

'Twas supposed to be a joke, but look how well all of my other jokes have worked out in this thread

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Sorry Gnome, as I said, English is not my first language, and sometimes I don't get the jokes.

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When all else fails, draw a butt.

Very nice piece, at any rate.

I don't ink at all and when I do, it's either been with a really fine point pen (the good kind not the Bic kind - not that you can't do great stuff with a bic, but I'm not that good) or Illustrator or both.

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Just get a can of Endust Electronics spray cleaner. It's safe to use on LCDs, I've been using it for years and it's never damaged a screen. For best results use a soft paper towel, not the quilted kind.

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I use the same cloth I use to clean my sunglasses.

Works for me.

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You want, ideally, the kinda of soft cloth you'd use for, yup, sunglasses, glasses, or whatever. Something that soft. Even mildly abrasive cloth can scrape off the protective coating on a screen. Heck, you can scratch it off with a blunt fingernail. Most kits should come with a cloth though or the place you can get 'em should have a cloth to go with.