Methods, Maddness, and tutorials

[Sangotten]

2D love huh? okay!

Well I think that it looks okay but that there a re some "beginner" mistakes like: Shading and placing highlights with the dodge and burn tool, the colours that you create that way may be darker or lighter but not really correct as shading. Try using tuned down colours (close to the grey...).

anyway it looks cool but needs work...!!!:beer:

As for links...

http://www.nivbed.com
http://www.sofos.com/adi
http://www.jo-chen.com

eeeehhhh I've got more, so much more!!

[Stygian]

thanks for the links and the Crits Sangotten. I really love working with phtoshop and I know what I want it to look like its the tecchniques to get what I want that I havve trouble with . :shrug:


anyway anyone else want to share a technique or a tutorial ?

[neofotistos]

yes. actually, don't use highlight/burn at all. these brushes don't really know the colour you are after. I prefer to use the color picker to choose a darker/lighter hue for myself.

also, I don't know if you've found out you can regulate the size, opacity or both of your brush stroke. variable brush size helps the painting look non-digital. a good exercise I've found, is to use my pen (wish it was a wacom!! mine's indescribably cheap) as a real paintbrush, loaded with oil paint. I start off from a white canvas and paint away various textures (feathers, textile, rock, etc)

finally, I don't know if you are aware that in photoshop you can set your "sketch" layer (preferably black pencil lines, but that can be fixed easily with some brightness down/contrast up) in Multiply mode and take the layer to the top of your layer list.

that way, no matter what colours you paint on the layers underneath, unless they are pure black, you will always still see your sketch guidelines.

hope I did help a little bit..

[Stygian]

@ neofotistos, thanks and yes I think that will help. I'm going to start a new piece tomorrow night I have a long holiday weekend and I'm going to try to use all of your suggestions or techniques. I'll post the sketch when I get it done. Then update as I go that way you guys can tell me how bad I'm screwing up the nice simple technique you just explaine :rolleyes:

Thanks for the reply

Stygian

[Gamoron]

Personally Stygian I use the dodge and burn tool. I use it on a base layer to block in Shadows and highlights. It makes it easier to then do like the others say and fart around with the colour and change the tint/tone/shading. I use the smudge tool, and I use the airbrush tool on fade so that it doesn't always end abruptly. At the moment I'm still using a mouse, because I can't afford the tablet.:thumbsdow So I don't have any advice there. Something I think that is ultra important and which you may already know about is creating your own brushes. I make a black image that looks like how I want a stroke to look and then screw with the contrast and brightness, and then define the brush in the brush properties. Ajust the size of the brush to get varied sizes. this is key, satndard brushes can't do nice clouds, there just the basics. Screw around with the layer properties of a layer then merge it down when finished with it, and definitely download some plugins from something like WinMX, www.winmx.com, not all plugins are good but sometimes there's some decent ones. Check out KoryOH's thread in the 2D challenge, and read what Pearson said about good image composition, it helps :D . Screw with Motion blur, Add texture to some layers and maybe and a lighting effect. Just screw around with the program and check out magazines in stores. Maybe buy one if it's good. If it's good.
Someting that is important but not technique really is realizing that Nothing is just a single colour, there are colour highlights in everything. In the skin tone of a whitey european for example there is green, pink and yellow highlights all over the place.
Verbal diarreah there I hope it helped.:thumbsup: :beer:

[Stygian]

yes it helped I hadn't thought of defining my own brushes (just goes to proove I'm a noob ). Are there any magazine titles I should look at I can't remember seeing any on CG art and I may have to hunt by Title.


Stygian

[Gamoron]

Photoshop magazine, Computer Arts magazine are good. EFX Art and Design is good too, though it seems to be published rarely. www.efxmag.com. There is some good links to tutorial sights at the very excellent hosting site cgchannel.com, too! just go to the biggest bookstore you got and spend a half hour reading what they got. Check out art magazines too, because they'll inspire you to try something that make you probably discover a tecnique.

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