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These are a bit dated now so I hope you don't mind me showing them. I'm told they used a few, I don't play the game so I don't know.

Don't loose hope, and don't get discouraged. But yeah, telling you to not draw what you're inspired by usually isn't going to help. And even copying is better than not drawing at all. Just try to invent some of your own characters, and don't worry about style. Style comes with time. Just worry about conveying information, poses, light sources, emotion. Tell a story with every line. Keep drawing, and draw some original stuff too.

That right there is my favorite freaking pokemon ever.

Happy Birthday man, I didn't get you anything but you want I can email you some pictures of cats that I've saved onto my hard drive for looking at.

Haha, I'm just a dork and totally know better. =P

Just more of me being an airhead, here you go. I needed to fix the awful hair anyway.

At 4/14/10 09:05 PM, ReNaeNae wrote:

At 4/14/10 05:58 PM, J-qb wrote: IMPORTANT POST! READ THIS!
Because there seems to be some misunderstanding about the whole Monochrome thing, and because it will be difficult to create it with traditional mediums, Renae and I have decided that we will edit pictures

-- He busted me on this long before you posted, he just sent it in a pm. Don't bee too proud of yourself. =P I've already fixed mine just haven't posted it yet.

Here is mine, hope you dig.

The models are just damn fine. You need to get some textures on these asap. Some scratched gun metal, some beat up wood for the stock, etc. Models are fine, get some texture on them. Fine work, I can't offer any advice as you're far beyond my own 3d abilities.

It looks fine, you just gotta keep using the tools is all. My advice on digital painting is to avoid the air brush. It has its use, but you should learn to paint with a hard edged brush first. Avoid gradients and the airbrush until you can render well withouth them. Then you can start using them again. The drawing looks fine, you just chose neutral colors and the combined with it being digitaly colored isn't attractive, however, you've got to learn. And the best way is to 'do'. If you want to build a house, don't read a book about building a house, just get some wood and nails and start building one. Good luck.

Yeah, I don't want to come off as a know it all or anything. Thanks for reading, hope it helped in some small way.

Inspiration --

Sometimes I have a little trouble getting inspired. I'm sure we all do. After I've spent all day coloring someone else's work or drawing storyboards, I'm tired of looking at the computer screen, I just want to watch tv, or play some games, or sleep, etc. There's NO drive to work on what needs to be worked on, my own stuff. What I usually do is just go to the park or workout for a little bit, take a shower, anything to rest my eyes for an hour. Then I come back and get to work on my own stuff. You just have to realize, it isn't 'Should I do it tonight?' it is 'I am going to do this tonight.' That's just how it is, so you better get inspired.

If you know you should be working on something, then you need to get yourself inspired so what you produce isn't half-assed. That's all there is to it. The first key to this, at least for me, is to find what inspires me. There are a few books I keep within arm's reach of my work area, Spectrum, Blacksad, Pride of Baghdad, Blade of the Immortal. Skydoll, and tons of conceptart books. Art of Halo, Halflife 2, Lord of the Rings, Warcraft, Mass Effect, etc. Now, these books are sort of related to my own work. TroA is my baby because I enjoy making the world more than making the comic. So I keep that kind of stuff around me at all times. When I play games, I want to work on games, when I read books about world creation or look at amazing comic art done by my favorite artists, I want to work on comics and create.

So identify what inspires you. Then keep it nearby. When you say, "I need to be making a page right now." Then pick up one of these, read ten pages, then put it down and use that drive. Realize, you have to start before you can finish, and there's nothing in the book you're reading that you can't one day do. Those books (or whatever inspires you) are your fuel, and your pencil is your rocket ship.

Be careful not to use these as a form of procrastination though. I'm guilty of picking up a book, planning to read ten pages to get fired up to work, then reading thirty. Don't do this! You need that time to get your work done, read enough to get going, then put it away. It'll always be there and you might need those additional pages for more inspiration later! =P

And don't get discouraged, just work and create!

-- Character Creation --

I wanted to talk about character creation this week. Now I'm no master, but I do have a few tips you guys might like to hear. I'm mostly going to try to talk about the physical creation of the character.

(( This part is dated, at the time I had a webcomic series. You can read it at http://www.lorestrome.com if you want, but it's pretty dated now.))
Shape: Alright, think about you character's shapes. Try to make those shapes part of the character's creation every time you draw him or her. If you look at Brond, he's essentially a cube, with a hemisphere for a head. He takes no time to draw. Capp, his body is a rough wedge, his head is kind of a cube with a triangle on the bottom. Etc. Think about these, and if you use different shapes for different characters, it'll show in the end. The human eye is lazy, and it reads the shapes quickly without you even realizing. Think, "Would my reader be able to tell who this is simply by their silhouette." Obviously this isn't necessary for every character. I know Avatis and Jasper would look alike it was just their silhouettes. But almost everyone else you'd be able to identify.

Height: I can't stress this one enough. If you make all of your characters have different heights, and you're consistent with it. It will become part of what identifies them. There isn't much more to say other than to DO this. It helps a lot.

Color: Not as literal as I make it in TroA, color can be very important in telling where a person is from or what they are like. Red is passionate, a person who wears reds and warm colors will often feel powerful or filled with life. There are tons of articles on this all over the place, and it wouldn't do any good for me to repeat them. But just be aware of it. Color is vital. Hair color can give you instant info on where someone is from as can his or her skin color. Types of clothing combined with popular colors can convey if someone is part of a team, or an organization. Just think of these things as you create your world. It'll pay off in the end. Chances are, no one will notice all this hard work, but it is there and makes your world tangible.

Hope this helped, I think I have a few more older entries to dig up if you guys would like. Stay cool.

The best thing you can do is what you're doing. Draw from life, from photos, and from examples of good form. If animals are your thing you might check out work by terryl whitlatch. She is seriously one of the best animal anatomy artist I know, she makes it look easy. Also, if you have trouble with a specific spot, just draw it over and over. Find three or four photos of the subject, and draw all four of them once a day, even casual sketches. Just make sure you mind studies them. In order to draw something, you have to understand it, to know it, to learn it. Good luck, keep it up, you're already showing improvement don't stop now!

Cool stuff, great horror element going on in some of them. I'd like to suggest you just keep it up, keep drawing as many of these creatures as possible. And keep a log, keep them in order, date them if you can. So that in a year you can look back and see how you have grown. I'd also like to suggest if you don't mind, that on your humanoids try learning your own mental skeleton, a figure yuo can easily sketch BEFORE you start to draw your armor and features. It'll be a pain for a week or two, but once you have it, trust me, your work will be so much more solid.

Draw with shapes, then add the details. Jusy my two cents, hope you dig it. Good stuff, keep it up. ^^

Well, getting inspired and being inspired are important. The best kind of fuel. What I do is I read comics, look at art books, etc, but I watch my time. I could easily spend hours looking at art or watching inspiring movies, but I don't want to. I watch/read just enough to get excited, then shut it off and hit the drawing boards. Also, I'm a firm believer that drawings a bunch of bad drawings is better than drawing none at all. And you gotta draw out the bad ones to get to the good ones at the bottom. So just draw, draw draw draw and never stop.

Taking Critical Hits --

A couple of my artist friends have asked me how I keep from getting upset with everyone online. They say, "Hyp, you take crits so well and never let yourself get down." Well, first that isn't really true. There isn't an artist out there that hasn't questioned his or her own work. I do it every day. But you can't dwell on stuff, it isn't productive. Just let the thought pass and tell yourself, even if you don't produce any good art today, be art is still better than no art. No art won't help you grow.

Just, try not to care what people think too much. I post art on forums, and about 70 percent of the 'feedback' I get are people's personal tastes. I just let those slide off my back because you'll never please everyone's tastes. A good chunk are 'crits' I don't agree with, but hey, you've got them, think about them, make your own decision, and move on. And then some of them, the smallest number of course, are good, helpful crits. Those are usually the ones that get me down a little, haha, because they're right. They're fact. But the person, even if they posted it in a terrible, untactful way, they probably meant good bye it. If they have an attitude, just ignore them. The best thing you can do is say thanks and forget about it. Act like it didn't bother you.

I'm not saying ignore crits or comments, don't. I'm saying, don't let them get you down. Especially if it seems like that might be what the person posting is trying to do. Some people are bored I guess. Don't let people walk on you, but don't let them get you worked up either.

Care what people think.
But don't let it bother you.
Draw and paint for you. Not them.

Prevail --

I don't understand our need to judge. Especially with art. We all have things we like, and we don't like. I don't enjoy paintings of sports, regardless of the skill it took to create the painting. The subject doesn't interest me. But if I see a painting of some baseball star, I don't take the time out of my day to let the artist know. Why would they care if I don't like it. If my telling them I dislike their image, doesn't help build them in some way, then why do I waste my, our, time? I don't.

So you don't like anime, so what? Don't comment.
So you don't like anthropomorphic characters? Don't comment.
So you don't like realism...

I don't know. I just only try to give good advice to other artists. I hate when I'm idling in an 'art chatrooms' and someone posts a painting, and all they get is, "It's just stupid anime. It's a furry!" etc... I just have always expected better behavior from my peers. We're creative thinkers. We're intelligent, we're original, we discover and explore. And apparently, many of us still act like children.

I think a lot of our self loathing as artist could be the source. It's so easy to be mad at yourself. You paint that painting you've been dreaming of, and it doesn't look as you imagined, you get mad at yourself. And sometimes, you get mad at others who it seems to come more easy to.

Try not to let this happen. Please guys. Stand up, be better, prevail. Try not to think of it as a contest. Paint because you enjoy it, because your heart needs to paint, and don't compare yourself to others, study hard, work hard, but also, try to enjoy it.

Pretty wicked, digging the high contrast and cool color choices. Keep up the hardwork, nothing but good can come from it.

I made these posts for a blog a while back, thought I'd share them.

Working Pro ---

I wanted to talk about working for others. Getting into design work, doing commissions etc. Just a few things I've learned over the years.

After you've done all the NDA stuff, you move on to the creation. Most private commissions people don't care about NDA stuff though. They'll usually let you know if they do.

1. First thing, make sure the client knows what they want, before you start working for them. Lots of times they'll be like, "I need you to design a monster." Which is great! Designing monsters is cool. But you need specifics beyond that, don't start working until you've pumped them for more information.

Does the monster need to run on all fours, or upright? Is this a modern beast, or a fantasy beast? Does it need to have powers? What powers? If this monster a hunter, or a thinker, or a mindless rampaging beast? Get the specifics, because if you don't, they'll suddenly pop up when you've already done some work. I can't count the times I've been hired to do some work, and the client hand to god didn't know what they wanted until after I'd done some work for them.

2. Work in levels. You do some thumbnails; tiny sketches based on step one's info. Get those to the client. Let them pick what they like, what they want to change, etc. Sometimes if your client isn't very experienced, they'll get scarred at this stage, sometimes they don't understand what a thumbnail is. They think you can't draw, because your thumbnails are messy and they made a mistake. Be sure to let them know, these are VERY rough sketches, we're trying to uncover what you want, so that we can save time.

Once they approve a thumbnail, you're to the next level. Kind of fill them in on this. Don't be a dork and go, "Onward to level two now!" in a bogus robot voice. Say, "Alright, great. That's the hard part, the first stage, from here on I'll be tightening pencils, so are you sure you're good with this?" They say yes, you move on. They don't get to go back unless there are special circumstances.

Do the same with the pencils, you get them to give you the 'okay' for the pencils, that way you don't need to go back and make changes, and if you do, then you wouldn't be entirely out of line to ask for additional tender. I mean, little things are fine, but if they want to change a pose or something, that is a lot of work, and often means an entirely new drawing. Work with them, but don't let them run over you. The same applies to inking, coloring, etc. With digital tools this all has gotten more flexible, but work is work, it all takes time. And I've never charged by the hour, I always charge by the job, but I watch my hours too.

3. Tying things up, I always make sure, at the end of my transaction, that the client tells me they're pleased. If they're not, I press them a little to find out why, and fix it. Most of my private work is return customers. Which is why online you see so many of my works are anthros, yet I'm not into anthro stuff. I used to do a lot of anthro commissions, and have return hits sometimes. Make them you friends, but business friends. There is nothing wrong with being friendly while also behaving in a professional way. I'd say 99.9% of the time I end of good or better terms with my clients.

On payments, with the average person or very small company, I request half up front, half when I'm done. With large companies they act like they're doing you a favor letting you work for them, and you'll just have to wait. I've waited a year to get paid. It's bs, but that is how the system works right now. Freelance artist = not getting paid on time. Just get used to it and have something to fall back on if you can. Until you hit it big and become a commodity, you'll have to deal with that kind of thing. =]

If you have any questions, let me know. Hope some of you found this useful, I'm certainly interested in hearing your thoughts.

Inspiration ---

Hey everyone I hope you're doing well and drawing, or writing, or creating, lots. I just wanted to encourage everyone to go create something today. Don't worry about how it is going to turn out. Don't make any big plans for it. Just go, and create and enjoy doing it.

When I was a kid, I'd sit at my desk and draw these goofy comics for like 6 to 8 hours a day. I spent every free moment away from school drawing these comics. I had stories man, and they needed telling. And of course, I look back at them, they're terrible. Of course they were. BUT, I didn't care. I enjoyed the act of creating them. We forget this I think in our race to be the best, to compete with others, etc. I don't mean to say, 'let yourself get sloppy', or 'don't work hard.' But just take time out and create for fun every so often. I think it is healthy and keeps your favorite hobby from becoming a job. Have fun. =]

Go now, and create. ^_^

I suggest never worrying about the word 'style.' Never give it a thought. It is what snooty elitist artist claim to have, as well as terrible wannabe anime artist who refuse to learn anatomy.

Style comes with time, it just happens. It happens when you forget about defining one. You just work on making the best art you can, and in 5 years you'll start hearing, 'You have a neat style.' Then you'll know that you have arrived. =P

Just my two cents, stay cool and keep painting guys.

At 4/2/10 09:24 PM, CrossFyre wrote: Good to see you solved your problem :P

Hey thanks man, learn something new all the time. I prefer to learn it in the hardest, most frustrating way. =P

I found out what the issue was everyone. Thanks a million for the help, I had a large .png that wasn't even that big, but it was really wide, like 3k pixels wide. It was a moving bg to be seen out of a window on a space ship. Anyway, seems removing it fixes the issue, so it must be the shear width of it. It's working now, thanks for all of the help everyone! XD

Also adding, I went in and cleaned out a lot of the large audio and art files, reduced it down to 14 megs, and it still has the same problem. So it isn't related to size. The error came on kinda suddenly, as I've been testing it in both ie and firefox all along, just all of a sudden it refuses to work in them. Even locally.

At 4/2/10 03:48 AM, BoMToons wrote: Do you know what version of flash player the browsers are running?

3 of the machines are running newest version, one of them was running an older version but it had the same effects.

At 4/2/10 05:17 AM, AlexHeaton wrote: Have you tried compiling on a different machine? Or using a different compiler?

I have not tried compiling on another machine, I'll give that a try, right now I only have it installed on the one. More on this soon. Also, I'm sorry I'm not familiar with other compilers besides the macromedia one.

At 4/2/10 05:24 AM, Ani-x wrote: Could be a problem with the swf security settings.
If you have any kind of block, or import lock on the swf its self, It may be causing some odd glitch with FF and EI.

I don't think I do, or I haven't made any special changes outside of the scope of the basic settings. I'm going to go check and see if anything looks off.

Try saving the FLA under a new name, Then exporting it again.

Just tried this, same results.

If it still does not work in FF and EI, try disable any site lock or export security you have on it. Then see if it works...

I don't have any of these on it.

If it still does not work even with the disabled security, Take that SWF and save it off the internet from chrome, Then try uploading the SWF you saved off Chrome and seeing it works in FF or EI.

Ok, this was a good idea, just tried it, same results though.

My thinking is there is either a weird glitch or a line of code FF and EI doesn't like.
Usaly these come from protection security's on the SWF its self

I can't find any security settings or anything turned on, even so everything should be at the default as I haven't learned anythign about flash security settings yet. The file runs fine, the buttons and vector stuff all works, but imported art such as .png's don't show, or show up as empty boxes.

I tried compiling in several different version to no avail, same error. I also tried reducing and increasing the quality of the compression, as well as even removing some chunks of audio to try to reduce the file size.

I'll give that a shot man, thanks, lets see what happens.

Thanks for looking, I'm new to flash so bare with me. I'll happily answer any questions you might have.

The file is about 19 megs, shouldn't get any bigger, mostly because of voice acting.
It is a simple game, my first one.
When I load the Flash Movie from windows explorer, or open it in Chrome, it works perfectly. It also of course works fine when test run from Flash itself.
If I open it in firefox or internet explorer, most of the non vector art is missing, audio seems to work fine.
I've tested it on 3 machines myself, and had two friends test it on theirs with the same results.
I assume it has something to do with the size of the file? I know Chrome is pretty streamlined

Thanks in advance guys.

Altrain pulling out the badass cobalt colors, oh girl.

Great stuff so far everyone! ^^

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Horatikhan bottom feeder. A passive and harmless creature living primarily off of fallen plant matter. It uses four basketball-sized floaters that it fills with internally processed gas. It produces and expels gas as needed to control it's depth. It is armored on the upper parts of its body as when it rests, it does so on the ocean floor, this gives it protection in its vulnerable state.

mine is here

http://www.lorestrome.com/weekly/albums/
userpics/10001/jumper.jpg

Hope you guys dig it ^^ Some kind of tree lemur fellah who jumps around shocking prey with it's scythes. Not too creative but at least I hid it's 'bizzness' under some hair.

You're so badass, I'm all eight equal equal equal D over here.

Altrian -- Lima Beans

At 1/20/10 04:32 PM, Hyptosis wrote: Priasps

Piranha Wasp spliced

Nom Nom Nom Sting Nom Nom

http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2010/0 20/f/f/Pirasps_by_Hyptosis.jpg << better quality

Priasps

Piranha Wasp spliced

Nom Nom Nom Sting Nom Nom