The_PMD

Wait, she doesn't have any internal organs!

I've always been a believer in the idea that you should sketch with the idea of what's underneath the skin, like start by laying out the bones. And then this artist comes along and perfectly illustrates the point. And then, near the end, unintentionally illustrates it even better by throwing in a right arm that wasn't in the original skeleton sketch and it's completely out of proportion!

Cool little demo.

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I feel like your last few pieces have been a little too clean. That is to say, the chracters have stood too far out of the background IMO.

It might just be me but the work you did on Chief Justice and Val Halla was of a little better quality. (and when i say this, I mean the difference between 99% and 100%)

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I have the exact opposite reaction. I think the intergration with the background has gotten much better SINCE those two. The background on Chief Justice especially bothered me. I mentioned it and Doug made it better, but I still think that the background is coming up to the foreground too much. Especially when you compare it to the more recent works. The first one where I thought Doug nailed the background was Plasma Stream. It has a great amount of detail in it, but the space of the piece feels right, like there's the right amount of distance between things. Raydey Ayte (sp) was also an excellent background.

This one is excellent, and I like the background, but there's something about it that bugs me. The color is all very localized, which I think is kind of pulling the piece apart a little. Not sure what to do about that, given the monochromatic nature of your friend's hero.

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:P I was just kidding. That's pretty amazing especially for photoshop.


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???
Photoshop can do pretty much anything you need it to do, 2d wise. It's one of the most amazing and complete graphics programs I've ever seen.

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Now THAT"S what I like to hear!

(BTW, do you think there are programs out there better than PS for this type of thing?)

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There's always Painter. Whether or not it's better is an "eye of the beholder" type of thing. I know Gill uses both Painter and Photoshop.

::rides through the thread like the paperboy in Better Off Dead:::

TWOOO DOLLARRSSS!!! I WANT MY TWO DOLLARRRRSSS!!!!!

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It's not THAT all over the place. But that will make it easier to draw, I had some misgivings about trying to draw a young child.


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You should've seen it before I convinced her that the colors should be purple and pink instead of pink and slightly darker pink!

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I think I have a pretty good idea for pose/scene, hopefully she'll adore it

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There is little doubt in my mind!

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Just don't say anything til it's done

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Wouldn't dream of it!

oh no no no. CHINEY is an adult. Well, she's in her late teens, which is an adult to my daughter.

My daughter designed her costume. That's why it's so ridiculous and all-over-the-place. But she's gonna LOVE your drawing of Chiney!

Rowr, I would be thrilled if you could draw my daughter's character! Chiney is a MA scrapper. And, yes, she was designed by a little girl (I think she was 5 when we made Chiney) If this odd child-designed costume freaks you out, I can give you one of mine to draw. But my kid would LOVE it if you drew Chiney!

http://img176.imageshack.us/my.php?image=chineygu8.jpg

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No rush, take as long as you need. And no, they don't know eachother, though it would be possible for them to coexist.

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Okay, I'll just pick one then. You'll get the art faster this way anyway!

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Now that the order is settled.

1. Luna Ice/EM/Fly blaster.
2. Lark BS/Regen/Fly scrapper.
3. The Genie's Dream Mind/Kind/Fly controller.

Somewhat spammy bio/desc's available upon request. Feel free to take some liberties.

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Well, looks like I'm drawing your characters!

Here's the good news: I'm a pretty good artist.
Here's the bad news: I have a lot going on and am really slow! So, this is gonna take a month or two. (If all goes well. If bad things happen, it will take longer.)

Anyway, I like all 3 costume designs. Do these characters happen to know each other? Or can they?

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So I'm wondering, just to get a general 'feel' on what the community thinks at large.

Would you, as an artist, be opposed to having a 'beginning to end' montage of a commissioned or fan art piece published on the web? I.e. going from sketch phase, to pencils, to inks, to colors, in some kind of say, animated gif or whatever? Would it be polite to ask the artist's permission first or just go ahead and do it? Of course in my head the 'right' thing to do is ask. But how would you feel if someone didn't ask and went ahead and put that up ? Do you as an artist not want people to see those early sketch phases or is that kind of thing ok?

I know. Odd question. I've been up a long time this morning.

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This is something I would want to do myself, not have someone else do for me. I would entertain someone asking me for permission, but would be red-faced angry if someone did it without asking me first.

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Alright so here is who we have confirmed so far I think,

Farwielder
The_PMD
Derek_Fayte
Quake
Serengeti_Lord
NewEden
_BAS_
Pep_Rally

Keep that list growing.

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Can we rig it so that I get Pep_Rally? No? Oh well...

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I'm not sure if you said that because you want to draw a 8 foot cheerleader, or because you like my scrawlings, but either way, thanks PMD.

-Pep

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Definitely both.

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Alright so here is who we have confirmed so far I think,

Farwielder
The_PMD
Derek_Fayte
Quake
Serengeti_Lord
NewEden
_BAS_
Pep_Rally

Keep that list growing.

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Can we rig it so that I get Pep_Rally? No? Oh well...

You had me at "Taking as long as you need"

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Personally I'd love to see comic with Jomaro/Gill's pencils and inks with T!M/Verika's coloring! Then a Graver/Gill collabo for the cover...Woo fantastic.

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Well, the idea I was working on was based on pencilling and inking is a lot of work for a monthly.

So how about Jomaro pencilling, Tim inking, Graver on colors? And Doug Shuler doing the covers in Poser/Photoshop!

Okay, that would be pretty much the best comic book art ever. It wouldnt even need a story for me to buy it!

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Not having T!M on colors is kinda of travisty in my eyes..he's fantastic on his coloring. But I mean we're just thinking up fantasy artist collaborations.


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Well, yeah, but Jomaro is outstanding at inking too. I was just trying to get as many artists in there as possible, to make it feasable

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This piece is officially the most difficult 3D piece I've done to date. It has 3 major colors that are very different (orange, pruple, and green), in very similar amounts. Plus, the reflective surface on CYBORG required over 40 hours of render time for her armor alone! Her armor also demanded that the entire set be modelled since it would reflect her entire surroundings. Thank goodness DAZ had this incredible warehouse interior.

I've spent the last 3 weeks on this piece... but I think the effort was worth it.

CYBORG-GIRL01 vs MISO - poster

CYBORG-GIRL01 vs MISO - detail shot of Miso

CYBORG-GIRL01 vs MISO - detail shot of post work

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It came out really well, though, Doug!

Did you consider just doing a rendering of the background and using the rendered map as the reflection map? In the end piece, the reflections don't look specific enough that it would've made a difference.

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The easiest way is to render the image with a transparent background. I usually use PNG as my file format for that , since it keeps the alpha layer and only renders the character.

Once you have her rendered and saved as a PNG, you can just copy/paste onto any image you like.

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I do the same thing, except that I use .tgas. Cause Im a Targa snob!

Just keep one thing in mind: jpegs are evil. Never render to jpg. Jpg is your last step for the version that you're going to post to teh intarweb. That's the only thing they're good for.

Im imagining that Poser/DAZ studio is like every 3d program that I've ever used, where if you render to TGA, it automatically makes an alpha channel that you can use to drop out the background.

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Personally I'd love to see comic with Jomaro/Gill's pencils and inks with T!M/Verika's coloring! Then a Graver/Gill collabo for the cover...Woo fantastic.

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Well, the idea I was working on was based on pencilling and inking is a lot of work for a monthly.

So how about Jomaro pencilling, Tim inking, Graver on colors? And Doug Shuler doing the covers in Poser/Photoshop!

Okay, that would be pretty much the best comic book art ever. It wouldnt even need a story for me to buy it!

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I am still reading them on the ftp site.

I think some of you, while not completely wrong, are quite harsh.

The first serie was good . It was nice to see the storie focus on secondary characters. The art was good too but what I liked the most about it was that is was consistent, it stayed on the same level through out the 12 issue ru.

The new serie started out good too. It gave us a better idea of who were the big guys in the CoH universe. As far as the storie goes my main problem is that it has becomefocussed on one character (Manticore) who I do not relate to. As far as art is concerned it started well but contrary to the first serie it keeps fluctuating from issue to isssue (and even sometime within an issue). The last issue I read (#14) was the worse. To my amateurish eye the inking is the worse part of it . The colors themselves look good, The lettering is standard. The writing is no better or worse thant the issue just before and the art itself does not (again to my eye) have major problems. The inking however looks to say the least , rushed. I personaly like crisp well defined inks that give value to the pencils underneat. This inking they did does exactly the reverse. It just makes everything look flat.

I do hope that 15 is better

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Well, to my more educated eye, the inking was atrocious It was like the inker was trying a rough kind of style but without the strong lighting that makes the work of others who use that style effective. I don't necessarily need crisp lines, but I do need the inker to have an idea of where the light is coming from in the panel.

The pencils weren't bad, but not as good as what had been seen before in the book. A lot of the compositions were really understated. Which I guess I can see for part of the book, since there was a lot of talking head action, but overall I wasn't digging it.

I liked Brandon's work on the Blue King comics, but, to be brutally honest, I've liked a lot of the CoH commissions he's done since then a lot more. It makes me wonder about how tight the deadlines are in the comic book world. I've never attempted to do something on a schedule like that.

You know what would rock? If Brandon found an inker to collaborate with...someone really good at inking, like, you know, Jomaro.... and put together some sample pages for Top Cow....

Holy crap you're good.

Still alive and still doing amazing art. Nice!

Yeah, that's a speed line. When I darkened the background, I didn't adjust the layer with the speed lines (Motion Blur FTW) so they kind of disappeared, except in that one spot where the background is lighter. Despite calling it "done" I might fix that before sending it off to TA. It's a relatively quick fix.

Aw, you guys caught me on the moon. It's a 3d rendering that I did in Maya (I used a free texture map of the moon's surface as both the color map and bump map) I altered it significantly in Photoshop,changing the colors, adding the glow, and reducing the opacity to get it to fit in with the rest of the picture, or so I thought! Well, I slipped it by everyone except two of the more talented artistic eyes on the board, so I'm gonna call that a "win."

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Wierd. I replied to this thread earlier, but I don't see my post.

Anyway... this is a lot better than the previous incarnation. It looks complete now, and the darker clouds really make TA pop out. I'm not a fan of the cape leaving the frame, but since I didn't say anything before, I'll let that little criticizm go.

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LOL..that one would've had to have been registered a LONG time ago to get changed.

I'm not sure I would've gone with you on that one, though. I know it's a little unconventional, but one of the things I like most about the composition is how unbalanced it is vertically, with the cape leaving the frame on the top, and plenty of space at the bottom. I was using that to try to convey TA swooping down from above without any other details for reference like a city below, etc. As it was, I ended up placing the moon partially for reference on that count (and also to make the yellow light on the left half of TA make sense)

Although I'm sure you would've made a very convincing argument as to why the cape shouldn't be leaving the top of the frame. Yeah, I know, it eliminates the whole "bottom of the cape silhouette" device, but I'm not much of a cape guy. I'm the anti-McFarlane.

Thanks for the compliments and advice Doug. They were invaluable.

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Damn man I was a little worried when ya said you were taking away some effects before but this did come out much nicer!!


Yeah the red clouds really make TA pop in this picture too I agree!


lol Yeah I know how much of a pain in the but this was for you but the end result was definately worth it!


Was a pleasure working with ya man!

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It was the fun kind of pain. I just need to do more of these so I get quicker at them.

The original lightning was complete overkill. I got too attached to the "ooh shiny!" quality of it, but it was really covering up some of the better parts of the painting. Fortunately I had the master, Doug Shuler, to point me in the right direction on that one.

Yeah, the new sky took some time, but I think it's a drastic improvement over my first version. Once I got that done I knew I was in the homestretch with this piece.

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First of all this is really great. The quality of the art and artists on this forum is just becoming amazing!!!

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Yay! i inspiered someone! Yeha!


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Graver do not sell yourself short, many of the aspiring artists here look up to you and a few others.

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Yeah, and it's not just the aspiring ones.

Oh, and damn good work there, Battlewraith. I especially love the centipede coming from his eye socket.