Character Artwork, yo.

[wangxiuming]

Wow! Love the stained glass and the lighting, amazing work!

[Fury]

Me, the Wacom, and Painterx3 have sat down and decided it was time to get aquainted. Actually it was more like I had to lock away all the sketch pads and pencils, for I am one of those who's had a wacom for some time now, and I've looked at it, freaked out, and ran back to the pencils and paper.

I'm going to post up my attempts at doing an entirely digitally rendered painting of Josie Tam. Because this is hard. And feedback is wanted, please.

[gbbishop]

ah wacom woes. yes learning to sketch on a tablet is a B. Just stick with it.
Also technical exercises help. drawing strait lines curved lines ellipses. make the lines precise start slow. Make sure you relax your wrist. I have a nasty habbit of tensing up on my tablet to get the control I want. But at the cost of a healthy wrist.

One thing that might help is to approach the pipeline differently. in trad. mediums I find my line work gets really intricate but if i try to carry that over to digital it starts feeling off. If I stay loose and fast and constantly build and layer and refine and build and layer.. etc. rather than seeking that super polished line art, I feel I get a better result.

Also, I recommend you check out Mischief at madewithmischief.com this program is by far the best at translating my hand movements to a traditional like stroke on the tablet. I now use it for all line art. I then export to PhotoShop and paint there. I never sketch in PS or sketchbook Pro anymore.

[Fury]

Oooh, thanks for the tip! I'll definitely check that out. At the moment I'm using PainterX3 because it "feels" a lot more like what I'm accustomed to, with traditional media. I still have a really, really big learning curve, and I guess one of my biggest things is needing to tell myself "Hey, it's ok if you fuck up. This is new. You don't have to make amazing happen on your first try."

[Doubtful]

Oooh, thanks for the tip! I'll definitely check that out. At the moment I'm using PainterX3 because it "feels" a lot more like what I'm accustomed to, with traditional media. I still have a really, really big learning curve, and I guess one of my biggest things is needing to tell myself "Hey, it's ok if you fuck up. This is new. You don't have to make amazing happen on your first try."

What's X3 like? I just grabbed the demo but I'm dubious as hell about forking out that much soldi.

As for the " it's OK to fuck up" thing; give it a couple of weeks and you'll find the opposite is true, you'll go back to pen and paper and find yourself trying to ctrl-z with your mind.

[Fury]

I may or may not be the person to ask about X3. I am an *enormous* fan of Painter products, but also I am not at all familiar with all the bells and whistles of the program, since digital art is something I have been afraid of for so long. Still, it feels a lot more natural to me than PS has, to date. The drawbacks that I have found is that it often lags- the algorithms that Painter uses are much more complex due to it mimicking natural media, making it more of a resource hog. Since a natural look is more what I'm after, I am personally ok with having to take a moment to let the program render what I just did. I have it installed on my laptop, and it's not the most spry creature anymore, so that's also a part of the issue I'm sure.

There are things I can do in painter that I can't do in PS, and vice versa or so I'm finding. I have tinkered with passing an image back and forth, and it works, so I doubt that's going to be a big deal. Just... don't try to have both open at the same time.

Other than that, I need to dig deeper before I can rightly pass judgement. And I'm already seeing the benefits of digital vs traditional- I was able to correct anatomical mistakes without having to scrap and start over. We'll see how it goes.

[The Butcher]

And feedback is wanted, please.

She needs to be more bald, imo.

[Kitsunestume]

<.<
>.>
*plunk*

I suck at making people, as discussed in this thread already, but this is technically an artwork, and it's made by a character, so I'm gonna stick it here. Well, that and I kinda wanted to show off what people would see on the wall of James' new office. Its canted because its on the desk currently, being worked on and stuff.

It's still a WIP, gotta make threads look like threads and then labels on the threads, but most of it was done this afternoon/evening, so figure I should take a break and go to bed.

Cheers,
Kit

[Fury]

Very cool- I am a huge fan of maps of all kinds, so I totally dig!

[Fury]

Still scribbly as hell, but slowly taking on more shape after days of arguing with it-

[gbbishop]

check your anatomy on the hand holding the sword and find her spine. It looks like she is tipping forward a lil bit.

What is your goal with this piece? are you going to fully paint over the line art? or will you cell shade it? or is the line art the final goal?

[Fury]

Clearing out some of the spammed images

[Nyssis]

I drew Ramza, the legit bald snake oil main character of Final Fantasy Tactics or something.

[sonuvalich]

Those eyes...why is he trying to seduce me?

[Jhickey]

All of this is amazing! I wish I had artistic ability.