Preserved Topic: Making an Eye and need some finishing hints (Page 1 of 1)

OK I've finally been playing with making an Eye for a project I've been working on. (The point was to leave a hint of cicutry in the iris so you can ignor the odd lines you see there. What I'm having trouble with is the eyelashes and to a lesser extent the Eyebrow. Does anyone have any hints to working realistic hair or is it one of those hand paint till it's right things. I understand not all things can be done with filters and whatnot I'm just wondering if anyone can help me with some Hair making ideas.





[This message has been edited by Nightshade (edited 07-23-2002).]

It may be in your interest to check this out: http://faq.ozoneasylum.com/FaqWiki/shownode.php?id=162&sortby=rating

To answer your hair/eyelash questions do this: go look at your eye in the mirror. Do you lashes look like those you've painted? I hope not. Take into account the size of your eyeball compared to your eyebrow, look at the distance between them, etc.

I can tell you right now that your iris is too big and the eyebrow is too close to the eye.

Thanks that link is where I started at. I agree on the Iris and believe it or not I've already shrunk it. Just starting on human proportions. As for looking in the mirror that is where I started but I am rather week in the airbrushing department and I'm having trouble getting that nice smooth curve that normal Eyelashes would have. Is this going to be a matter of making selections and painting off from them. I've seen some very well done eye's here and am wondering where people got those nice smooth stroks using a trackball. I'm a long way off from affording a Graphics tablet but am anxious to start improving my airbrush skills.

I have however been making further efforts to improve the look of it.

I always found hair to be made easy with the smaller texture brushes set to 1 or 2 and then zoom in and at a normal speed just start brushing very closely and not so spread out...

But then again DG is probably the one your waiting for...


_____________________
Prying open my third eye.

Well I can tell you that when it comes to eyelashes they don't stick straight up from the eyelid. The bottom lashes curve up then down, and the top lashes curve down then up. Your iris may look better if you releax the eyelids a bit - right now your eye is going though some major caffeine highs.

I think weadah has some pretty good reference pictures somewhere...Ah yes:
http://www.tryptych.net/asylum/eyemidmale.jpg
http://www.tryptych.net/asylum/eyeolderfem.jpg
http://www.tryptych.net/asylum/eyezoom.gif

Have a look at those.



[This message has been edited by synax (edited 07-24-2002).]

Thanks both of you bot the tips and the pics help.

I have been working with 100 - 300% zoom. I assume you mean the preset brushes? (When yourefer to texture brushes. At a setting of one or two I can't picture using much else besides a round.

The pictures will help with placing the lashes more realstically thanks.

[This message has been edited by Nightshade (edited 07-24-2002).]

Your skin texture is interesting, but very wrong...Unless of course the guy is melting.

wouldn't surprise me at all. This is my first attempt at human anatomy of anytype and my first attempt at Airbrusing. Everything else I've made has been with Tutorials and brushes. Very little freehand.

I know the Eye is very out of shap and am going to redo most if not the whole thing tomorrow.

On the lashes zoom WAY in 800% + use a small, hard brush. If you`re useing PS 6+, set the brush settings to fade ( size and opacity) settings will depend entirely on size of the image.
and , yea the secret to the trackball is time. Practice, practice, practice.



Cell245

Or paint it at a decent size (3000-100000px wide), don't zoom in at all and work with big comfy brushes, effectively achieving better results when shrunk to the desired size.

There?s no difference between zooming in to make something so big you can't fully see it and working on something that's so big you can't fully see it. See? And brushes - 1px brush strokes shrunk down have amazing results. A 1px brush used at size isn't quite so effective for painting.

Also this gives pretty wicked control over shading fine elements like eyebrows, lashes and other facial hair. Keep a 'view > new view' (or 'window > documents > new window' (in PS 7)) at 25% or less next to the canvas you?re painting on - this is where dual monitors will rock your world, but aren?t needed just to check where you?re at. Failing that use navigator and zoom out to 25% every so often.

Avoid shading/edging with the airbrush, smudge, dodge/burn. You want texture not gloss and that?s where your lumps are coming from. Dodge/Burn aren?t shaders at all although they worked ok for this in one version of PS. For the most part people are trying to set/fix lighting inconsistencies (value) but what happens is they excite both hue and value destroying both.

Pick your light (direction, colour, intensity etc) and build the work up using chosen colours on the brush tool (and its blnd modes). At a decent size with shrinking in mind, you can paint pretty ruff and it wont show up once done, in fact it appears as extra detail, making ppl ooh aah that lil bit more.

Give it a try - hth

Weadz

Thanks Bob and Weadah.

Weadah you wouldn't happen to have any good ready resources here on the web about making better uses of the light sources in Photoshop. I'm using 7 so somewhere I have all the tools you mentioned. You also mentioned "avoiding" the smudge tool. I'm afraid I used that alot. It seamed the best way to spread the color I had painted in. I'll have to try a few different methods today.

A good way to learn how to shade is to use greyscale. That way you only have to worry about is brightness, hue and saturation are thrown right out the door. Being able to tell the difference between saturation and brightness is important because when you get the two confused your rendering gets confused. Thats why alot of painting programs make students take drawing courses before painting courses.

Thumper: We can't all be realisticly perfect. Thats for oil painters!

Insider - shut up, go away.

Nightshade - Osprey is right on the money - working in greyscale, adding colour once your values are set is an excellent approach. Colour adds depth which can be very confusing. Once you have a greyscale setup, add colour by using brush tool blend modes onto the canvas or a series of layers. Something else worth noting is once you have a setup you can colour it a 100 different ways without disturbing the light. Somewhere in the FAQ is a tut DG n I did on the subject - also another one in there on colouring BW photos - same applies to paintings, renderings etc.

Not too sure what you mean man - "resources for making better uses of the light sources in Photoshop" - mebbe you can clarify. What I meant was more of an observational thing than a PS one - taking note of where a candle light hits elements/objects around it for example and trying to copy that as best as you can.

Smudge yupper - "It seamed the best way to spread the color I had painted in" and thats pretty much why it's a bad idea. Draggin' the correct hues from there to here upsets everything in between, even soft fuzzy brushes disturb what's around them. Build up those values by picking them off (press alt when using the brush tool) and placing them - hard brushes give texture, soft fuzzy ones blend.

Also 100000px wide *might* be a tad optimistic, I meant 10,000. You knew that right =D
Gods I hope so. =I

Weadz

Another lil rant on the smudge tool.

Once upon a time I thought this tool was the holy grail of digital painting.... It seems like a better approach then directly applying the greys, espically if your using a mouse, but it'll only hurn you in the long run. Doing it the way weadz has suggested will take a lot longer at first but not only will it give you better results you'll also learn a lot quicker, and you'll learn better methods for approaching more complex paintings.

Oh and don't worry if the fairy's ya paint'n look like roadkills. Mine still do! It's a long road, but it's hell fun

quote:

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Thumper: We can't all be realisticly perfect. Thats for oil painters!

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I'll be sure to keep my mouth shut in your presence INSIDER. My apologies for contradicting any of your useless ideals. Oh boy, 1600 posts and counting...not a single one insightful.

Show us your progress Nightshade, I'd like to see that eye when you're done!

Is there a general rule of thumb regarding the curvature of the highlight and inner refraction? My attempts look either too flat or too curved for the object.