'Spirit Painter' collaboration, possibly more

[na_th_an]

With stopping suddenly he probably means that you can actually see the rectancle in the textured areas. I forgot to mention that.

And note something: "not being pro" is not an excuse. Ever. What I meant with "saturated colour" was not about tone. I forgot I was writing in English and you don't have loose meanings . What I meant was "plain", how can I express it? What I meant is that pencils don't mix well with a "perfect" colouring, i.e. what aetherFox said: such a perfect and "flawless" colouring really asks for a "flawless" outline". That's why I suggested watercolours, not for the tones but for the textures and "non-perfection".

The original drawing looks already shaded, i.e. those "unneeded lines" I pointed out in my prev. post., so the shading made with the colouring just mixed badly, that was my other point. You can shade in black and white on with colours, but mixing both shadings doesn't look quite.

My original claim was that the lines were too dirty for the colouring or the colouring too clean for the lines. A different base drawing, cleaner and more defined would have mixed better with the colouring; a dirtier, dimmer, less perfect colouring would have mixed better with the base drawing.

Note that if you both were newbies posting a mediocre drawing I would have said "hey, this is so cool!", but as you both are fairly good in what you do I feel myself in the need of providing a more harsh, more realistic, constructive critique.

I've found you both in a kind of "we like it, we don't care if you don't". And that can or cannot be good, but it's certainly not a good way to go specially if you want to keep improving.

[Josiah Tobin]

With stopping suddenly he probably means that you can actually see the rectancle in the textured areas. I forgot to mention that.

:o Seriously? My monitor must be too dark or something, because I can't see it at all... Maybe I'll turn up the brightness when working on this kinda thing in the future.

And note something: "not being pro" is not an excuse. Ever.

See, this is what I was afraid of-- I was afraid my post would sound like a bunch of excuses.
It's not.
What I meant by 'not being pro' was that I can't be expected to color/cg in a completely professional style. I saw the constructive criticism in your post, I just thought you seemed to be getting at something more, that's all.

The original drawing looks already shaded, i.e. those "unneeded lines" I pointed out in my prev. post., so the shading made with the colouring just mixed badly, that was my other point. You can shade in black and white on with colours, but mixing both shadings doesn't look quite.

Yep... And if I was comfortable with vector I would've traced the sketch to get cleaner lines. I might have a go at that on the next peice I color.

as you both are fairly good in what you do I feel myself in the need of providing a more harsh, more realistic, constructive critique

I know, and I never intended to take any of your post as an insult-- I can just get a little bit defensive sometimes.

I've found you both in a kind of "we like it, we don't care if you don't". And that can or cannot be good, but it's certainly not a good way to go specially if you want to keep improving.

Again, that's how I was afraid my post would be interpreted. I didn't mean to make it sound like a bunch of excuses or discard your criticism in any way. :wink:

[aetherfox]

You brightness is turned waaaaaaaaaaay down. For me the rectangle around the texture is VERY clear.

When you turn your brightness up, you'll understand what I meant about those random brush strokes.

Vector art is just something which has to be practiced. A beizer pen is something that is easy to pick up yet difficult to perfect. Some people can just start with it and finish in perfection, others find it very difficult.

Photoshop CS has an OK vector implementation in it, however I'd recommend Illustrator because...it's the best

[Josiah Tobin]

:o I think I need a new monitor... The rectangle's still not very clear... I've had some problems with this monitor anyway :lol:

[Rattrapmax6]

:o I think I need a new monitor... The rectangle's still not very clear... I've had some problems with this monitor anyway :lol:

I blew out two, One really blew up one day.. and the other the screen started twisting up, that was weird... looked like this:

\\\\\
/////
\\\\\

Coundn't read a thing... Heh, yours isn't that bad, aye? heh heh.. :wink:

[na_th_an]

Yep... And if I was comfortable with vector I would've traced the sketch to get cleaner lines. I might have a go at that on the next peice I color.

I don't know how to do vectors (but I'm learning Illustrator in a while, 'cause I've expermented with this style which I like but it's a hell to do in Photoshop), but I have atrick to produce clean outlines.

The trick involves the use of Macromedia Flash. I use version 5, some learning stuff I got from a cover mag, so I guess anything fits

The trick consists on taking your hand-inked drawing and scanning it in black and white (this is: 1 bit per pixel) at 300 dpi or more. Save it as a GIF. The open Flash and create a doc that's the size of your GIF file. Import the GIF file, and select "Trace bitmap image" or something like that (I got a Spanish version, heh), which is in a menu (Transform or Modify should be, I guess). This will turn your bitmap into vectors. Play with the settings. Adjust: Normal and minimum area = 8 pixels should work okay, but find yours.

Once finished you can export the current frame to PNG and load it in Photoshop

This doesn't produce great results, but most of the time it removes jitter in the inked image. Try to colour the vectorized-rasterized image and then resize it to be smaller: it will rock.

Look at this picture: the lines look smooooooth. And the whole page was finished in like 15 minutes, so trust me: it works This one looks also smooth. The originals were small and looked like rubbish when scanned. Now it looks like CG in some frames.

[aetherfox]

I'm surprised Illustrator doesn't have somthing like that.

Maybe it does...I should check.

[TheDarkJay]

Look at this picture: the lines look smooooooth. And the whole page was finished in like 15 minutes, so trust me: it works This one looks also smooth. The originals were small and looked like rubbish when scanned. Now it looks like CG in some frames.

These are really good, if only i knew what they were saying...

[Josiah Tobin]

Nath: Yeah, I was toying with flash for that purpose awhile ago, but I never found that option. Now I guess I'll have to look again. :wink:

[TheBigBasicQ]

Nice work. And I couldnt see the rectangle first but then I turned up the brightness and it was clearly visible.