Torroes_Prime
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Posts
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Joined
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hmm well I want to avoid making it look like Gaussian is in a dark room plotting, so I'm shooting for something that's moderatly light, as if the lights in the room had been dimmed, but not turned off, to make the hologram clearer to read.
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really you think it should be that dark around the abdomen and around the exterior?
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Quote:I'll let ya know after I decide weather to tell you if you're right or notOriginally Posted by ChristopherRobin
P.S. What did I win?
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So my study into using Photoshop to produce the images for my Fan-comic continues. For those who aren't aware of it, I originally made a post here showing my first solid effort at producing an image for my comic using a combination of line art and cell shaded coloring. While I was satisfied with the result in that particular case, I knew I could do better both in the general process I'm using and in my own understanding of the image. So I made a post with a break down of the process I used. That post is here.
Now, I received a lot of very useful information and help in that thread and I really have to take a moment to give a shout out to Juggertha, Suichiro, LadyJudgement, FrozenDeath, and Zappalina. They have been immensely helpful to me in the process, and not to mention incredibly patient. I know I'm somewhat difficult to work with and they've all shown un-godly levels of patience with me.
Now, using what I've learned both from the previously listed artists and several books, I've produced this image:
Mainly I'm looking for feed back. Is the image clear? Can you tell who it is? Can you tell what he's doing? Do you have some indication of what he's thinking? How can I improve the image? (Keeping in mind this is for a fan-comic and thus time vs. quality per image comes into play) -
okay... I just learned more anatomy by reading this thread then I did all through high school.... I'm not sure what to think about that.
On a more accurate note, nice work on the art Scoot. I'm seeing a lot of improvement. -
I noticed some really dopey mistakes I made in the previous posted image. So lemme try posting this updated and corrected version:
So, how's that look? -
okay, so I had a bit of a brain storm... or maybe a brain leak. Not really sure which. But anyway. I had a brain storm about shading, not the Rikti but that image of Gaussian I posted. Please excuse any grevious typos you find in this post. Brain not running on all cylinders.
Anyway, for a 1am brain blast am I heading in the right direction with the highlights?
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hey, no need for apologies for this LJ. You've all been immensely helpful in my efforts to acquire skills in an area I've had no interest in previously. I've been looking at take some art classes as a local community college the problem is all the classes get pretty filled and I find that I tend learn less in an actual class room environment then I do through my own means of trial and error and experimentation. So believe me, you have nothing what so ever to apologize for.
Which actually brings me to a question I had that isn't actually art related. When I manage to pull off this comic, do any of you mind if I list you in the credits for the comic? -
Quote:Great minds think a like ?Originally Posted by Juggertha
Funny, I was just about to do what LD did... I think he's giving you a pretty good example there.
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I would like to announce the completion of the first Rikti Mother Ship of 2010! It a furious battle with the Rikti throwing everything they could at us but we pushed on and prevailed! The Rikti Ship has been severely damaged and remained inoperable at this time.
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hmm, thanks for the info guys. This is really trying to teach a computer how to write a song. I'm very technically minded and the last art class I took we were still using finger paints and crayons.
Any books or speccific tutorials you all would recommend I check out for information about shading?
And I'm assuming that the application of shades and highlights aside, my process is pretty solid for what I'm shooting for? -
here's an example of what something I'm now able to do using this line art method that I couldn't with screen caps, Guasian pointing with one finger versus all four.
(it's also an example of me trying this at 300 ppi versus 72 ppi)
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damn... Hey Frozen, could I impose upon you for a step by step of how you did that shading and highlighting?
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Quote:Don't worry. I've run several of them and I'm becoming quite good at it. 2 bits of advice, well one since Pum got the first one. But second one: Before the raid actually kicks off, knocks your graphics down to minimum. Good sized Rikti Raids get furious and intense and the more you ask the game to render, the more lag you'll need to deal with.Originally Posted by Golden_Avariel
I'll certainly try to be there with 50 dark/dark tank. I've never done it so I'll need some guidance.
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Quote:Ask and ye' shall receive!Originally Posted by LadyJudgement
PS: can you also upload the original rikti reference, as to help with the final coloring.
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Quote:What I'm trying to achieve is a method of manipulating screen captured images to give me more control over the final image. Okay that was a load of horse hockey. Lemme try this another way:Originally Posted by LadyJudgement
What exactly are you trying to achieve? A certain final look? A Style? Are you unhappy with the basic cell shading you've achieved here?
I'm working on a fan-comic series, actually it's a revamp of a series I started about 2 years ago (You can check it out here). Originally I used straight screen caps for the images, then later I started using Photoshop to modify the images and apply various effects. But there were always things that I couldn't do that annoyed me. A big one was faces. More speccifcially facial expressions. Yeah, through demo editing I can swap faces in and out and get some expressions, but no where near what I want. Another thing are hands. If I want to have a character pointing, a screen cap would have the character pointing with their entire hand. What if I want a shot of Ms. Liberty flipping Statesman the bird?
Now, if I could get like Juggertha or someone to draw all the images for every page in my comics I'd be like wildly excited. But I have no means to compensate then for their efforts. So I'm doing what I do best: Attacking a problem, studying why it's a problem, identifying a potential solution and working to achieve that solution.
What I'm going for as an end result, is a standard that will A) not be a screen cap, B) appear more comic or animated like, and C) Give me control of some form over the images.
The story line I have in mind is a post-appocalyptic setting following a third Rikti Invaison. So I had the idea that the Vanguard Base has been more heavily fortified with a full war wall system around it.
(Click on image for full size version)
That's what I'm after. The ability to remake the screen caps into something that's more controllable and modifiable. I need to be able to stream line the process to a point that it won't take me 4 days to do a single image. Right now, using the process I outlined in my original post I'm looking at about an hour to an hour and a half per character image (probably a little more if I mix in Juggertha's tutorial) and maybe 4 or 5 hours for backgrounds depending on how complex the background is.
So short version, This cell-shading style that I've put together works but I know it can be better. Since It's really a wasted effort to make a post and go "Hey how do I do this better?" I posted a break down showing each step I went through with an explanation. That way it's much easier for people to follow my process and help me identify potential improvements in it.
I'll do ya one better and post images of each stage:Quote:Originally Posted by LadyJudgement
Could you provide the a sample of the 2nd and 3rd stage for download, as to allow us to play around with some coloring tutes?
Here I have completed the line art
Followed by a solid dark gray color fill. I used Dark gray as it's used across the majority of the image:
After I did the dim gray, I went back with the polygon lasso and colored in the red, white and green sections. Each is on a separate layer.
Now for my specific needs, I could just stop the process right here and call the image done. However, I think I can make the image better with only a minimal time investment.
So, I add a shade layer (Using the technique shown in Juggertha's tutorial)
And then I added a highlight layer:
I got a little creative and used a trick I learned in web design to make the optics on the helmet appear more glass-like:
yeah, I'm not exactly sure what happened there. It's the same line art from my original post. if anyone has any clues, please toss 'em my way.Quote:Originally Posted by LadyJudgement
My opinion is that the latest version has a few harsh edges, no soft separation, also, your black line has some piling going on... you know those little circles of fabric from a frayed worn out sweater washed one too many times.
As a .psd file it's 769 kbQuote:Originally Posted by LadyJudgement
How large is this file?
It meassures at 373 px wide by 808 px high with a resolution of 72 PPI.
Can you break that one down for me? And keep in mind the last art class I took was in the fourth grade.Quote:Originally Posted by FrozenDeath
I don't know if it's what's bothering you, but looking at the most recent image the shadows are inconsistent and don't support the volumes described by the linework.
hmmm, this might help explain what I was thinking a bit:Quote:Originally Posted by Zappalina
I just do sketching at home, if you look at your picture, determine where the light is coming from. Looking at your picture it is hard to tell. The area that light is coming onto the rikti like in your original the last one had a highlight on it's left shoulder pad,and light coming in from the top, the new one it does not. Like the light was coming in from the left on the original. On the new one it's hard to tell where that is other than behind it a bit, if so the shadowing is a bit off, or should be more pronounced maybe. The head is really good though. But I'd make the light/shadow consistent like if you are lighting up from the front and left make the back and right darker. Give some highlight to the spots the light would glisten off of, kind of like what you did with the first pic. Or change where the light would be coming onto the rikti back to where it originally was possibly if you want it to look more like the original one.
Like the way the green on the head glistens/highlights it shows it coming from the top right on the last pic.
But the face has shadow on the right side of it, even though the light is possibly coming in on that side, due to looking at the left shoulder pad where it has the face's shadow on it. Maybe just too many light sources coming in on it.
Basically, the light would be to the left of the Rikti, but behind us and by a good distance too. -
So I took a look at Juggertha's Tutorials, btw I got a couple questions for ya about some of the steps in them Juggertha. Don't worry nothing major or problematic, and I think they'd make more sense to me if I had some form of artistic background but such is the times.
Anyway, I read through your tutorials and went back and re-did the coloring on the headman. Then followed your tutorials advice for shading and highlights. I'll certainly say the result is much improved over my previous effort, but something just seems.... well I donno. Just something is twitching a nerve and I can't place it. Maybe one of you guys can spot whatever it is that's irking me.
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So last week I posted a test piece I had completed while I was exploring photoshop options to use for my comic plans. I got some very useful feed back on it. Now I want to take it a bit of a step further. I've posted this stage by stage break down of how I'm accomplishing my comic images. My thinking behind this is that those of you who are actually artistically inclined (Unlike myself) might be able to help me along a bit by seeing what I'm doing in each stage and suggest ways I can improve it or even accomplish the same thing faster. So, with out more rambling from me, here we go:
(click on the image for larger view)
As you can see this is the Rikti Headman Gunman. I wrote a demo of the model walking in place. Just walking. Nothing else. I then ran it through the demo launcher with demo dump on and it generated several frames. I picked one that fit the scene I'm going to drop him in and pulled the screen cap over to photoshop.
Once I've got the screen cap in photoshop I drop at least 1 extra layer on top of it, but more often I add a brightness layer to the screen cap. While the brightness layer washes out the image a fair bit, it's of little consequence to my process.
On an empty layer, I use the line tool to trace out the image. I usually do this smaller pieces versus trying to do the entire image in one go. Once I've traced the image, I stroke the line using a brush setting with 100% opacity and 100% flow. This produces the line art image you see to the right of the screen cap. For clarity reasons I add an extra layer below the line art and create an all white "knock out" in the shape of the finished line art, otherwise whatever is below the line art shows through and that gets a little confusing when I place the image on the background.
With the line art finished I move on to the basic coloring. I will usually duplicate the white knock out, and recolor it with whatever the majority color of the image will be. In this particular case, a dull gray.
With the large color area filled, I create a new layer for each new color. In this case the nest color I did was the red. So I take the polygon lasso tool and go through the image selecting all the areas that will be red. Once all of them are selected I filled the area with the red. I repeat this process for each color.
Finally, I go back and add details such as shading and lighting. The only really consistent part of this step is adding a high light color to most of the sections. IN the case of the Rikti Gunman I went in with a brush set to 25% opacity and 10% flow and a black color and drew in some shadowing on the abdomen plates.
Well, that's the process in a nut shell. From start to finish, the entire proccess takes me about 90 minutes per toon image. -
Lets send the Rikti a message for the new year and the new decade!
January 2, I will be leading a Rikti Mothership Ship on the Justice Server. Kickoff is slated for 9pm Eastern time. -
Quote:Yeah, the wall is the result of my trying something, several something actually. I initially thought it worked, but not so much now.Originally Posted by Starwind
Overall, it looks like you are conveying what you are intending to. For critique, my initial thoughts are...
The wall on the left looks meh...unfinished in relation to the detail you have with the ground beneath them or the paved road.
The details/lines in the ground underneath the characters and paved road, should fade away or blur-out the farther back they go. It will also help the viewer's eye transition into the background which has no detail.
Keep up the good work.
curse you starwind!!! You got my brain rolling and I made this modification to the image:
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Quote:Of course it's photoshopped. I can't even draw a straight line with out grid references and the shift key.Originally Posted by Scootertwo
That's totally shooped I can see the pixels.
eh... they're godzilla scale. It was intentional, I assure you... maybe.Quote:Now that Steel mentions it the characters do seem a tad large for the perspective of the screen shot. -
So I've got an idea about how to accomplish some stuff to make a fan-comic with the amount of control I would need to accomplish what I want to accomplish. I did this test piece as a... well, a test. Think of it as an acid test (click on image for full size version). So thoughts? Suggestions? Comment? Keep in mind I'm doing this for a comic, so I'm trying for a balance between image quality, speed and control.
And just for reference, here's the original screen cap I started with:
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If you're looking for a large group of people in a scene, a trick I've used before is to put a call out for any with Pets that stand on the ground. So Controllers, Masterminds, Dominators are great for that sort of thing. Also anyone that has a veteran rewards pet (not the Whips or demon cause they float above the ground) work well.
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well worth the wait.
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yeah, I'm looking at it now with a clear mind and I'm wondering what was I smoking when I made this build. I know I was trying something that was lacking in my current build, but for the life of me I don't recall what it was. Probably help explain why I couldn't figure out what was wrong about it
