City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

Two questions.

CaptainScience

By CaptainScience,
Posted on: 2008-03-04 09:08 in Multi-Media Fan Creations

 

Posted

For you guys that actually know what you are doing.

Question 1:

When you guys fill with color. Assuming you have selected an area to fill (whether sep layer or not) Do you use a gradient to get the shine you require or do you try to brush a lighter color (or overlay) and smudge or blur in your own shine.

Some seem almost perfect in their highlighted and shadowed areas which produce the 3D effect.....which makes me think you have a much more robust gradient fill tool then I do. Some highlights seem to form to the actual shape as if the gradient tool understood the shape.


Question 2:

When I do lines hand drawn they are straight and look like lines should. When I darken them in using my WACOM I can use the brush tool or pencil tool in black and vary the thinkness. These lines seem to come out much more wobbly then when I draw or ink normally.

Do some of you use some sort of tool (which I cant seem to find) where you click points along your original pencil lines.........then it forms the perfect darkened line as if you had the steadiest hand in the world? I know paint on edges can sort of give this effect but not like a tool that I could click along the area that I wanted a line.

View the story of W.A.R.F.A.C.E. and Septimus Bane here: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6785073/1/Meus_Profiteor#
my email chrismfears99@yahoo.com

 

Posted

Question 1:

example

First I created a flats layer. This layer has only single colors on it, without any depth or shading. For that picture, it had primarily red, an almost black grey and the peach color for face.

In order to shade I create another layer for shadows. I select the black color and a brush. Set opacity to 10-20% and flow to 20%ish as well. Then I vary the brush size to fill in areas with shadow. When they need more shadow brush over it multiple times. I never vary the shade of the black used, it's always pure black. You can see how it's kind of shaded in layers on the left side of the arm.

The exact same is done for highlights on another layer. Just use white instead and the same style of work with low opacity and low flow. Then layer on more and more white until it gets the good shine, depending on how leathery of a feel you want. You can see how I layered alot onto the mask, but not near as much on the face.

If you get a bit too much shine or shadow, don't fret. Make your eraser really big, lower its opacity and click a few times in the area until it has the right look.

Afterwards I might blur it slightly to make it look more fluid.

Can't help ya on question two, i'm stuck with a mouse.

Liberty
My 50s:
Hero: Armor Assassin (scrapper), Cross Dresser (scrapper), Surly Seaman (blaster), Defensive End (Tank), Rad Rhino (Cont)
Villain: Beast Infection (Corr), Sweet Zombie Jesus (MM), Milk Weasel (Stalker), Orgullo (MM), Agent Eris (Crab)

 

Posted

Writing you another tute based on this quick image, brb...

(don't worry I put it on Imageshack so you can click it...)

LJ

 

Posted

Doug is the man! I've read those first 2, and yer right the last one is the best... anyway, here's my sad attempt, using the very basic but fully functional Photoshop Elements 4, which you'll have to adjust Warface to your version 6...

LJ

 

Posted

Okay so far: For tutorial one, can you expand or explain this a bit further: If you fill that with black, doesnt the entire picture become black, how does it just increase your line size?


Step 16 - Apply the line art

This step is essential to package up your image and this step is also necessary if you wish to add special effects that cover the line art, like glows, etc. Bring up a selection of the lineart channel by Ctrl + Clicking on it. Invert the selection (Ctrl +Shift + I) then in the RGB channel fill the selection with Black (Alt + Backspace if the foreground color is black already).

View the story of W.A.R.F.A.C.E. and Septimus Bane here: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6785073/1/Meus_Profiteor#
my email chrismfears99@yahoo.com

 

Posted

Okay understand now alot better. I am still confused on making straight, bold lines though. Like I said when I do it on paper, it looks great. Scanned in, causes it to look worse......how do I fix the lines up after coloring?

Going through LadyJs right now.

View the story of W.A.R.F.A.C.E. and Septimus Bane here: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6785073/1/Meus_Profiteor#
my email chrismfears99@yahoo.com

 

Posted

Clicking it off will give you jagged edges when you use any selection tool, including your paint bucket. It causes nightmare problems if you flat with it off, where dozens of tiny snowflake pixels appear all over your flats, because the computer somehow misses them... I've used the paint bucket in times of speed, and truthfully it's not worth it... over the lasso, select, fill using Alt + Backspace method...

Try it if you think I'm lying, not that I think that you think I'm lying, all I'm saying is don't take anything for granted. With any new technique you have to use the methods that are comfortable to you aesthetically...

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
Why do you hit alt backspace to fill as opposed to clicking on the fill tool clicking somewhere in the picture and filling? Is that just a shortcut?

[/ QUOTE ]

Again the Fill Tool, or Paint Bucket WILL miss things, if you're selection isn't done with tight black inks, and I mean no greys. If I don't use the fill tool, I use the pencil tool (a straight square pixel brush) to flat large areas by hand.

 

Posted

Also Alt + Backspace fills only your selection. The paint bucket will fill everything and anything it can that has the same color intensity. So if you have flatted two shapes with similiar colors, the paint bucket won't be able to decide do I just fill this grey and not that grey, looks the same to me, screw him!

Selecting and Alt + Backspace may seem like a longer step, but it's more cost efficient time wise, and mistakes wise.

 

Posted

Good luck and as always, your Comic Art IM Team will disavow you, should this blow up in your face...

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
Also Alt + Backspace fills only your selection. The paint bucket will fill everything and anything it can that has the same color intensity. So if you have flatted two shapes with similiar colors, the paint bucket won't be able to decide do I just fill this grey and not that grey, looks the same to me, screw him!

Selecting and Alt + Backspace may seem like a longer step, but it's more cost efficient time wise, and mistakes wise.

[/ QUOTE ] AAAA HA!!! Thats why it kept doing that crap to me.

View the story of W.A.R.F.A.C.E. and Septimus Bane here: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6785073/1/Meus_Profiteor#
my email chrismfears99@yahoo.com

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
Good luck and as always, your Comic Art IM Team will disavow you, should this blow up in your face...

[/ QUOTE ] I fully expect this to be the case

I will scan each part I do of A SIMPLER eye.......slowly. You can check my work along the way.

View the story of W.A.R.F.A.C.E. and Septimus Bane here: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6785073/1/Meus_Profiteor#
my email chrismfears99@yahoo.com

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
BTW DJedi, I was telling my wife how good your stuff was with 3D art. She was very impressed. Great info, I will try and put it to work on my next four pieces I have to do.

[/ QUOTE ]

Very cool. Thank you =)

 

Posted

Here's that same tute applied to a pic of Ahnold I just googled, drew on my right monitor, while looking at my left monitor.

And Doug I take it back, that second tute is the one I like, but that one too neglects to mention adjusting the feathering on your selection from 2-5 pixels. For the longest I had these ugly, hard edge cuts one on top of the other... grrr.

Do you have (Doug) have any advice on how to do color holds? Those drive me bonkers, and I needs to learn em...

LJ

 

Posted

lol sorry i accidentally deleted the psd file after saving it...

yeah you go fine your own lineart, slacker!!!