Topic awaiting preservation: "My creeper" (Page 1 of 1)

Hey, all..ok, so this is my first picture that i painted in photoshop...
I know it's incomplete but what you think??
http://www.graphics.com/modules.php?set_albumName=album153&id=Crawler&op=modload&name=Gallery&file=index&include=view_photo.php

There's really not much to comment on. It's a good start, but I mean, there's really only about 5 minutes of work there.

Heck, that'd take me longer than 5 minutes to paint.

It's a good start. Keep refining it and add a background.

I think it's a great start Armen. You did not mention how you are creating the image, is it all done in PS, are you using a graphic tablet?

5 minutes?

By all means, show us your 5 minute creation.


It's obvious Armen spent a lot more than 5 minutes on this... Good Job Armen.

_____________
Is this thing on?

A Work In Progress

Great start Armen.

Keep working it. It'll turn into something really fantastic.

Well it's obvious that I've offended some people. That wasn't my intention, but too bad if I did.

Like I said, it's a good start, much better than my first painting infact, but there's really not too much to comment on.

[Edit: Actually, no. There is something that I wanted to say: Nice use of colors. That's something I have a hard time with (getting a good mix of colors in there), and you seem to have a good handle on it. Personally, I wouldn't have chosen pink, but that's more of a personal qualm.

Instead of a flat gray background, try to incorporate your light source into it. This will help with keeping consistant shading and lighting, which is vital to giving your image the kick it needs.]



[This message has been edited by synax (edited 12-10-2003).]

Right now it lacks a bit of dimension over the "nose" area. A bit too underworked compared to the rest.

Nice start.

__________________________________


Sexy Demoness cel

Oh Comic...blow it out your ass. Don't be champion to a cause if you don't have a wit to stand on.

Synax makes a valid point, there isn't a lot to comment on yet. So this needs to be completed. Armen admits that it's incomplete. Direction can be given, but "good job" isn't any sort of fucking help.

Having said that :

- It's flat, start working the midrange tones and then darken down and lighten up. You're doing well with form, now you need depth
- Blurring the background to differentiate between foreground, midground and bakcground is a bad way to start off...it looks like you're hiding mistakes. Work it in lighting, not blurs.
- Texture is a bit boring, look at realistic skin samples.

Aside from that "good job" Try not to start off on the wrong foot, don't listen to jackasses coddling you, try to glean real critiques and subtleties from what's said..it's the ONLY way to progress. Or you end up watching Bob Burns for fucking hours and drooling like an idiot for another pin-to-the-fridge oil painting.

Hope it helps.

Peter

only two things to add -

1) hard edged brushes are the way to go. Avoid the soft stuff, or your paintings just end up blurry.

2) dodge and burn are your enemies - stay away from them at all costs while painting.

as said, it's a decent start, but needs a lot more before any real commentary can be given.

Blow it out my ass?

LOL... what a piece of work you are. Blow it out YOUR ass... Ooh does that make me cool now?

One question though

quote:

---

Don't be champion to a cause if you don't have a wit to stand on.

---

Are you referring to my lack of PS wit or my lack of common sense wit. Unless you also are saying you could do better in 5 minutes... I'm confused. Because even with my rudimentary skills or 'lack of wit', I can still see that anyone would be hard pressed to complete what was done in 5 minutes. So obviously you must be commenting on the fact that it was bullshit of me to say it was a good job. Gee, I didnt know a compliment was so much smoke up the ass. It is a good job. And it certainly is not a 5 minute job, so fuck you too. There is a difference between a valid critique and being a douchebag. You are obviously talented in both areas.

I love the internet, where little geek dweebs think its all of a sudden ok for them to be pricks to complete strangers because they are normally so abused in the real world.



_____________
Is this thing on?

A Work In Progress

Thanks for the comments, first of all i spend 3 days making this!!! remember is my FIRST picture...
I drew it with a pencil" and did not have a scanner so i took a photo of it with nikon2500 , and worked on it...
i done it in PS7, mostly with smuge tool....

synax could you give me a better explanation, i'm quite dum u know...
[Instead of a flat gray background, try to incorporate your light source into it. This will help with keeping consistant shading and lighting, which is vital to giving your image the kick it needs]

quote:
Blurring the background to differentiate between foreground, midground and bakcground is a bad way to start off...it looks like you're hiding mistakes. "Work it in lighting, not blurs"

i Don't quite understand how to work in lighting??

If you guy's could show me your thoughts with examples, or pictures you've made, that would be hell of a help....

Thanks...

Well, I'm not very good at painting in PS, but I think it's a really good start. Other than that, what I would have said had already been mentioned. It might help to put Work In Progress in the title... but that's just me.

One more thing... ~stabs UC~ Stop jacking the thread... DarkGarden makes a good point...

Don't comment just to comment and give false satisfaction.
Constructive criticism is your friend.

That being said... return to your (what passes for) normal activites. Thank you!

Could I do better in five minutes? Oh comic, you really have no fucking clue. Learn first before commenting, or at least follow valid advice "Better to stay silent and be assumed a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."

As to the idea of me being picked on in real life...you probably won't learn, but that's an even funnier statement than your first.

----

All thread jacking aside:

Armen. Establishing a cognitive lighting source is your first step. Think of where the light is coming from, how it falls on the figure and where it will highlight and shadow that figure. For the sake of composition, start looking at using "tricks" like lowlighting the parts of the figure that are "deeper" in your painting. If you highlight the face structure where you want to call attention, then none of the lighting on the deeper legs etc. should be as bright or brighter than the facial lights. Dig?

You've been given great tips and advice here. Using hard brushes to define your figure, and then blending to achieve better transitions is the way to go. Your first steps shouldn't look "airbrushed" they should block in your areas of tone and colour. Don't be afraid to have it look rough instead of finished, then slowly work the figure "up" to softer and more palatable blends.

One other piece of advice WORK BIG.

If you're scanning in a sketch, scan it at a high res and high pixel count so that you can work the minute details later. When you reduce, those details will be less defined, but they will blend much better, causing the viewer to see a tighter work. No painting is ever viewed from 6 inches away, so try and keep it all in that perspective. Understand that perfection isn't natural, so those little blights will work out as random reality. You're defining shape quite well, now work the depth...find your focus.

A transitory background is also good advice. Working on a flat grey, white or black will always make the figure seemed stilted somehow. Have a fade or a rough idea of what you want you bg to be...rough it in...now work over top of it.

You're on the right track, so take these things to heart. People here love to give good tips, especially the true professionals in these halls. There's nothing better than seeing the progression of an artist. We've been through it aourselves, and still go through it, so the helping hands are always there. Just suck it up, take the hits and grow from it.

There's no room for coddling or fridge fame around here...if people expect that, they're driving to get a real hurt down the road

Work this one a bit more and let us see where it goes.

Hope it helps.

Peter

I'd bother myself with throwing in my two cents about the bickering, but as usual I know I'd be wasting my time or making things worse.

That said however....
Armen, whether you know it or not, I feel it needs to be bluntly said that you've got a long way to go.
Good start. Don't be deterred. But that's all it is... a start. Nothing more. Nax is right by saying there isn't much to comment on.... and I whole-heartedly mirror all of Peter's comments as well.
"Work in Progress" would have been good to add to the subject. As it stands now, it seems like you know it's incomplete but you're not going to work on it anymore. I think you've left individuals in a difficult position to comment on this.

For the record.... I can paint for 5 straight hours and end up with less than 30 minutes of solid paint work.
Something for people to keep in mind.

You said that you mostly used the smudge tool....
I've got a few words for you concerning that..... and it goes like this:
Don't fuckin' do that.
Take it from someone who made the same mistake..... don't do that.
I used to smudge together entire paintings over and over again. It's a waste of your time. You'll eventually set yourself back 6 months in silly finger painting fests, as opposed to starting to create solid work with hard brushes.
Even for tansitions... don't smudge the area together to transition.... paint the transition.
So yea... again: Don't do that.

There's a good chunk of info that we've worked into the FAQ here...
Don't just pop in there and say "oooo... pretty".. and then leave without reading the info.
If you've got questions about this stuff.... don't hesitate to just ask here in the forums.

:FAQ: Painting (Make sure you click the links and read through the applicable threads as well.. TONS of info here)
:FAQ: Painting II (Some colouring and definition bits in here... again, read the thread)
:FAQ: Can you give me advice on painting using a tablet? (While you may be painting with a mouse, general information and ideas can be extracted from this)

When you get done with reading that you're not doing yourself any justice if you don't practice.

quote:

---

One other piece of advice WORK BIG.

---

Like everyone has been said: It's a good start, but it should be developed further.

As has been said, the painting looks fairly flat, which is the result of both inconsistant (just a bit) and a fairly non-existant "world" light. Right now you have light shining down from the top and giving little specular reflections on the top of it's skull. But only in parts. Some areas are ignored completely altogether, and the shading isn't consistant with this light source.

Thhe second light source is coming from the left, giving you the specular reflection on the (bone under the eye) and the (area under the nose) (I don't know the actualy name for either).

You also have light hitting the front of the face, but it is ignored completely in the lower jaw and chin.

The muscle structure around the wing area doesn't make sense. I can't make sense out of how the bone would connect, and it looks like it doesn't have any muscles to control the wing.

As has been said: The right wing is blurry. Although I suspect that this was done intentionally, it's blurred too much. I'd suggest that you (experiment) try making it just a more solid color, and not blurring (leave out the shading).

The anatomy on the face isn't symmetrical. Although not everything has to be symmetrical (duh) you have bones (like on the left side of his face, where you have the specular reflection, that isn't on the right side. Use some shading and just a little bit of reworking the shape of it's head to fix that. The same problem also presents itself on the back of the head, where you have the two (lobes?) split by the zipper-ey looking area.

I can't see the cool little thing coming out of the areas between his jaw (spike? tentacle? random abberation?) on the right side of his face. Same goes for the little wing right above it.

Anatomically its eyes don't work. Either their oval shaped or their incredibaly large. If their big, then there should be space alloted to the rest of the eyes under the skin.

The painting looks very "jaggy." You might try refining this. The line art looks fine, but some areas (like the wings) are kinda "all over the place."

Don't use white. Or black. It looks bad. Especially for shading.

The best paintings come from the best sketches. Do a VERY solid drawing first. I don't know if you have or haven't...

The colors are very good and affect the mood a lot. They remind me of a bruse, and that makes me kinda creeped out. I'd suggest adding in a little color that contrasts the rest, though, to help give some of the shapes a little definition.

It is a very solid concept as well.

Good linework.

__________________
War is Peace,
Freedom is Slavery,
Ignorance is Strength.

[This message has been edited by counterfeitbacon (edited 12-10-2003).]

[This message has been edited by counterfeitbacon (edited 12-10-2003).]

QUOTE:
Anatomically its eyes don't work. Either their oval shaped or their incredibaly large. If their big, then there should be space "alloted to the rest of the eyes under the skin. "
- so , what you mean is to give more space under the eye? yes i assume i draw it from rage, not logic...

Lightning: yes i can see what you mean...maybe she's in a disco or something? i'll take that in mind..
by the way, i take the bad comments more usefull. I want to see what others doo...


QUOTE:
I used to smudge together entire paintings over and over again. It's a waste of your time. You'll eventually set yourself back 6 months in silly finger painting fests, as opposed to starting to create solid work with hard brushes.

Use hard brush?? I changed the compacity of the brush to 7% and used soft brush... why hard, wouldn't be that rough? rough i mean not smooth...

It wouldn't be rough as much as it would be crisp. Soft brushes make everything look blurred and ugly. Crank the hardness up to the max. Whatever opacity you use is up to your discretion, but you're not going to achieve nice transitions with soft brushes.

^ yep.

Well, since your work is being done digital, the methods for painting may differ than with a canavs painting, and the use of some tools in your favor is not something wrong, if you ask me. I mean, you even use different techniques when painting with acrylicas than with watercolors and charcoal, same happens in digital.

In my humble opinion, dodge and burn are not necesarily your enemies, in fact, they could even be your friends. BUT, you must be wary that your should not rely on them as the only source for defining volume. Darkening and high contrasting a color dont necesarily make them look as a real life shade. You should be the one picking the colors that should define shades, and then use burn and dodge for defining hard textures or some selective tones (i find quite handy burn for metal textures, then toning the burned sections a bit). I conveniently use smudge when i want some sort of distortion (like heat waves or a blur effect). You just need to know what suits best for you. Nothing is set on stone, and be free on experimenting here and there.

i remember some people considering some stuff cheating...as long as your work is not done by someone else, i dont find particularly many stuff cheating. Unlike coding and such, there is more than one way to accomplish your goal, just be certain to know what suits you (otr the situation) best. I keep using a layer in multiply mode filled with gray to set up some particular lighting.

I dont know where I am driving my post particularly. Maybe its because some people here seem to think hard brushes are the only way to go, or at least i felt like that.

Oh, btw, a nice explanation on the process of painting in PaintBBS, which can be applied to ps easily: http://lemm.nomoretangerines.com/ewj/main/oekakiprocess.html

__________________________________


Sexy Demoness cel

Um, not that I have anything constructive to add to the discussion, but I just had to comment on this:

quote:

---

Unlike coding and such, there is more than one way to accomplish your goal

---

You don't code very much, do you.

There is always more than one way to skin the cat. Sometimes we even skin the dog. It's called "thinking outside the box."



OK, you may all flay me now for being off-topic. One at a time, please.




___________________________
Suho: www.liminality.org

*flays Suho*

__________________
War is Peace,
Freedom is Slavery,
Ignorance is Strength.

cfb: There's more that one way to flay someone as well...

*snickers as he gets the dull rusty knives and hot embers*

quote:

---

Whatever opacity you use is up to your discretion, but you're not going to achieve nice transitions with soft brushes.

---

Interesting. Could you demonstrate what you mean?

Suho - Yeah, but usually you may adhere to some rules (call it sintax and optimization). There may be like ten thousand ways to make a rollover, but if there is one that just need three lines, runs optimal and is cross platform, why reinvent the wheel? This kind of things do not happen in digital painting, at least not as common, since you dont have to worry about specifications

__________________________________


Sexy Demoness cel

***THREAD HIJACKAGE***

Moth: I'm not saying NEVER use soft brushes, but their primary use should be light shading (read: LIGHT shading). Traditional paintings are done using hard-edged brushes (all but airbrushing, of course) and I bet that if you go have a look at your favoritie digi-artists' work, you'll notice it was done with hard-edged brushes.

Izz and I had a little fun a while back with that. I'll never _not_ use a hard-edged brush again.



[This message has been edited by synax (edited 12-12-2003).]

Synax, you misunderstood my post.

I was not being snide. I'm new to digital painting. I just wanted to see what you were talking about because the tutorials I've run across seem to use the smudge/soft brush school of painting. I don't like the results I end up with.

quote:

---

I don't like the results I end up with.

---

Just try painting something simple with hard brushes at different opacities until you're comfortable. Do shapes (spheres, cubes, whatever). Do their shading, lighting and cast shadows. Just play around, and DO NOT smudge or blur - just use your paintbrush with hard-eged brushes.

It also helps to keep a palette of colors for quick dropleting.