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It's interesting, to say the least.

I believe you could make it better by displaying more context to your image (right now it's just floating). You could also bring out the texture of such a gnarled tree by varying your line width and incorporating textures to bring out some grain to the overall picture.

There is also an issue with the level of detail on the lineart, seeing as tree bark has a generally uniform texture. You could perhaps make the image more balanced by adding lines and detail to the lower half of the tree in order to match the level of detail on the branches that are at arm height.

You can find hundreds of user-created digital painting tutorials on Deviantart in their tutorial section. I am a bit confused as to why you would ask for painting tutorials for CS3, since digital painting is pretty much the same tools and tricks regardless of the version of photoshop you are using.

Why prevent yourself from enjoying the best part about CG work!?

I've had a look at your work and the quality of your drawings and lineart is very good! I strongly suggest you take the time to explore the fun you can have coloring instead of shipping the work to someone else :D Try different brushes, textures, layer modes... It'll be worth it and you'll learn a lot!

I used to hate coloring and would only do the lineart... I guess looking at my stuff now it's pretty much the other way around >_<

Holy crap I find I draw myself almost exactly the same way you do when I draw comics o_o It's like... we have the same hair :O

Like, my drawing looks as if it'd been drawn on paper, it's all strokey, and Mike's strip is, well, not strokey, as if you had taken all the strokes and made them all go in one direction collectively. Sort of. Still not sure how to word it ):

It's not exactly skill or practice that I need, it'd still be a drawing of the same thing and all of the lines would be in the same places, they'd just not be as scattered as they are in mine.

I think, from looking at your previous work, that it's indeed a matter of technique. Multiple pencil strokes, while they may work finely on paper, are (usually) not the way to go around when working with a tablet. The reason being that people tend to divide a long line into many, fine pencil strokes; this is often a source of frustration when using a tablet, since the same technique will rarely provide smooth lines. Although it may strain your hand and mind for a while, you will have to concentrate on creating an entire line out of a single brush stroke. This will not only look a lot finer in the end result, it also signifies you have control and efficiency when you draw. When you are a bit more comfortable, you may add a new degree of difficulty to it all by allowing for pen-pressure control on your tablet. While the results you can obtain with PPC are amazing and very natural, pen pressure absolutely REQUIRES single, fluid brush strokes as multiple lines may give a miserable result.

Practice is at the core of managing good lines and pen control. If I may suggest, have one hand draw the line while the other is resting on Ctrl+Z. You may then immediately undo the line you just made and start over... When I started I sometimes needed 20 attempts to get a single line right!

At 2/7/11 03:30 PM, TurkeyOnAStick wrote: You're going to have to post an example of your current Photoshop work, because I'm struggling to understand what you mean.

I think you're after some painting style like Vonschlippe, where the strokes of the brush aren't obvious (like under the neck, and around the collar bones). If this is the case, you should have a go at customising your brushes. In partcular:
- Lower the opacity to say 40%
- Low hardness of the brush.
- If you have a tablet, try making the brush opacity sensitive to pen pressure.
You can also try downloading some custom brushes off the internet.

I got a warm fuzzy feeling inside when I read that =P

Anyhow, I must agree it's not immediately obvious what exactly you're trying to do. Are you asking about doing your line-art, coloring, or tools and tricks for the tablet? While it's true there is no substitute for practice when it comes to drawing, there is also a lot of practice involved in the mastery of its tools, such as a wacom pen tablet. Do you have any picture you can post of your current photoshop work, or perhaps the look you're trying to achieve?

At 2/6/11 07:38 AM, test-object wrote:

At 2/6/11 07:33 AM, Fifty-50 wrote: Awesomest Daily Deviation Evar. It's hell great. Look at it. LOOK AT IT.

Eh.... was this photo actually taken like this, with the white and all + some photoshop
or is there nothing original in this picture anymore?

The picture was taken like that; if you have a look at his other stuff you will see he is quite skilled as a photographer. I don't think he uses photoshop at all... probably lightroom for color correction but the rest is just fog and depth of field. Quite an astonishing picture.

I would say that most books are turned exactly towards beginners and therefore might not suit your needs. You can find some advanced tutorials on deviantart that might suit your need (such as this one), or you can find some extremely detailed ressources in magazines (such as "Advanced Photoshop Magazine", some of which is so far beyond my stuff I can't even follow...)

Putting apart the proportion errors and other mistakes, I rectified the tilt (it's more of a skew than a tilt) in the image. Even then, the base of the chair should simply be started over. Skewing an image or character is a common mistake! To make sure you don't do it, you should work with the on-screen grid AND flip your image horizontally from time to time. The horizontal flip really makes any mistakes pop out!

At 12/24/10 03:30 PM, GameMasterShania wrote: JPEG Version:

This can't be serious. After reading the entire thread (an act which I now regret, seeing all those precious seconds evaporate) I can now call this pure trollage.

At 12/23/10 07:03 PM, Glacier wrote:

At 12/23/10 06:39 PM, Vonschlippe wrote: It seems all the submissions in his gallery are from that character-making tool.

I did this work of art in half a minute. Try to beat my score!

Thats not art. Your using pre made things to build a robot together, and thats not yours.

I know. I am apparently unable to blind you with sarcasm.

It seems all the submissions in his gallery are from that character-making tool.

I did this work of art in half a minute. Try to beat my score!

Your art is simply wonderful!

What i like most about it is that, although they keep the style associated with sketching, they show remarquable stroke economy. That, in my opinion, is a major sign of mastery of a medium.

Keep up the great work!

At 12/20/10 07:05 AM, homojesus wrote: Exelent work! But I would stop making cartoon/anime expressional faces. It makes it blatently obvious that you use references, not that thats bad, it just suggests that you cant draw faces w/o reference.

I'm not exactly sure why you're saying that. If you're talking about my comics, that's because it's my own personnal comic style and I don't have 80 hours to spend on a single page with a wacky script. I can ASSURE you I draw most of my faces without references (see the terran medic's making-of, among others) and I find it strange you would suggest otherwise. I am always exploring styles and I do not see how photorealism and cartoons cannot coexist.

Anyhow, back to the main subject topic. I am more and more inclined towards doing a female ghost because they (not surprisingly) don't have that full-facial mask thing, and it gives me the occasion to draw some skin...

That's just how I've been doing it thus far, minus the "multiply" and "screen" parts. I have a hard time messing with the brightness/contrast on one layer and getting it to not look funny, though.
Thanks for all the tips, though. Does this look any better?

Yes, it does!

Keep pimping those shadows! Add lighting!

This means make more layers for lighting/shadows... Add shadows to your shadows, add lighting to contrast with the shadows, and eventually blend everything in together! I did a very quick example of what you should be going towards.

Thanks for the compliments! ^^

So yeah, it seems most people would like to see a ghost/specter as my next unit portrait. They indeed tend to be popular on fan-art galleries! I'm still wondering about the composition involving a ghost... Portrait or action pose?

I've included some very (very) basic possible layouts... Any preferences?

I tried the color correction thing, and it's not as prominent as I'd like it, but it does work. Thanks for that.
About the shading: you're right. It's something I'm a complete pussy about, and it's kind of a waste, because I do put lots of shades into the works, but they're usually too soft to really notice. Just increasing the contrast doesn't really work because the shades end up just looking weird when juxtaposing; it's really more of a problem with me just not using dark enough shades on top of the base colors to begin with. Something I really need to improve with (though I have improved a lot, considering I used to be incapable of digitally shading.)

Anyways, thanks for the awesome input.

You can try something if you're afraid of screwing up with shadows. Why not make three separate layer for your main color, for your lights, and for your shadows? That way you can always boost the shadows separately by modifying that layer alone. Put your shadows on "multiply" mode, and your lights on "screen" mode. That way you don't even have to pick a different color, you keep the same one and you just play with opacity. The layer mode does the rest.

And the best, if you screw up, it's always easy to remove a separate layer!

That last comic is awesome. You have a very distinct style and the humor was great! I love the monochrome look to it.

Nice job, that's all I have to say!

Thanks for your critique. I haven't gotten any in a while; its appreciated. I will be sure to use some of your tips.
My only comment is that I don't use the burn tool. I have SAI, which (as far as I know) has no burn tool. I did mess around with the contrast, but nothing major. Just painstaking time...
Once again, thanks!

Hehe sorry for giving off wrong technical advice then, I basically think in photoshop, even during a math exam >_<

I like where your coloring is going. Keep going at it!

If you allow me to give some advice, I would encourage you to increase the contrast between your main "flat" color and your shadows! Don't be shy with contrasting shadows, as they more often than not give shape to an image. Shadows are the color zones that give volume to your form, so it's very necessary to be able to discern them well.

Little tip if you want to suggest a night scene: add a new layer on top of everything else and fill it entirely with blue or a blue gradiant. Set the layer mode to "soft light", and adjust its opacity. Tadam! instant basic color correction for a night scene!! I actually use that technique a LOT for my drawings, but I use masks instead of a pure layer color overlay.

I think that on the second version of your wolf, you might have abused the "Burn" tool. Instead of doing so, you could have applied a slight "multiply" filter to suggest shadow over there, and perhaps taken the opportunity to further refine the slick and shine of wolf hair with a smaller brush! Some references might also help as to bringing canine anatomy and realism to the whole picture. Keep doing what you're doing though!

I get the feeling you invented some sort of story before submitting your art with the intention that you'd be judged less harshly and receive some sort of pat in the back... If you are not totally confident with your art, take your time and ask yourself if you really want it on display! I used to hide my sketchbook from sight and nobody really had a clue of what I drew until I felt confident enough to show some pieces. I still publish not more than maybe three new drawings per year because I find the rest is "not good enough".

Don't fear criticism, because if you choose to expose yourself to it you should already be feeling confident. Keep practicing though!

I saw your earlier post and here's some constructive criticism, even though there is a debate as to if photomanipulation has it's place in the art portal.

My first comment would be to get rid of the "canvas" filter applied on the background image. In the photoshop/digital painting community, such blank filters are frowned upon as they do not provide much quality to the image (actually, they degrade it) and they are a sign of lack of mastery of photoshop as a medium.

The composition you made out of stock images is interesting. While it would be possible to fine-tune the position of the men to either fit the "thirds" rule or the "golden mean" rule, the fact you chose otherwise might depend on artistic choice.

Here are some things to improve if you intend the image to be full-viewed at that size. The corners of the TV images need to be rounded-off to fit the actual frame of the TV. The black gradiant you applied in the shadow of the man in the back goes thewrongway: a projected shadow gets clearer and clearer as it draws away from the subject, not the other way around. It should therefore be darker near the feet of the man instead of clearer. There are several pixels of white left around the objects you pasted, such as the TV and the cigar. You can remove these by selecting the alpha channel around them, inverting your selection, increasing it's size and finally cutting away, if you don't feel like doing things manually. Finally, a good recrop would suit your image in order to get rid of the black frame on the background image.

I do not want this enumeration to pass off as rude, for you are not far away from having a very decent, artistic and clever photomanipulation right there. There is simply some tuning you can do in order to really pull off some artistic feeling to the image. Why not try putting a layer overlay on your image with a texture or a soft-light gradiant? You may want to explore all the color/mood settings you can project on your image!

Hope that helps!! Keep it up!

At 12/19/10 08:45 PM, Falonefal wrote: I am completely infatuated with you, I love the SC Universe, and your Medic blew my mind, you're an excellent motherfucker of an artist, props.

There are certainly some things I'd personally like to see.
Templars, yeah, they're cool but it's a little dull, everyone does templars :P

What I personally really really would like to see is a drawing of an immortal (as my favourite unit) but it's not really good for this purpose, only if you know how to make it interesting.

Here would by my 4 picks:

1: A motherfucking awesome drawing of a Dark Archon (Those dudes kick motherfucker ass)
2: Could you do Duran? He's the most badass character in the whole game, except for Void Ray Pilots and Immortals :P
3: Ultralisk COULD be fun if you would overdo it, put something artistic into it: A VERY large Ultralisk with a close up on the face area looking at the ground with a hungry look on his face, and on the ground there's a really small marine in comparison to the Ultralisk, could be fun.
4: Vulture drivers: you gotta know they're kickass.

I DO like the idea of an archon, especially the dark archons (because they have some sort of armor) but I am unsure as to how to compose the poster with an archon in it. Just google them... I'm not quite sure how to do something that has not been done before!

As for Samir Duran, I agree he's a badass. I could picture him as the ghost unit I described in my previous post. However, I'm afraid he's not instantly recognizable... Perhaps something more striking. The ultralisk idea, for instance, would be cool because it's an occasion to fill the screen with gorey details, liquids, secretions... and give off the feeling of brute force.

As for the vulture idea, I would have to consider including the whole bike. Still, all your ideas sound very reasonable to me!
Thanks for the comments, by the way ^^
-Nicolas Kudeljan

Hey everyone!

This is my first post to the Newgrounds forum, but I intend to hang around a lot! Some of you might have seen my starcraft terran medic fanart as it's been front-paged in the past days. If not, have a look at it here. Maybe you can help me: I am currently asking for some suggestions.

I have received several requests for another portrait of a starcraft unit, and I'm torn between many good ideas. Keep in mind I would like to maintain a similar format (wide poster, roughly 20 x 42) and the same photorealistic art style. I am not necessarily sticking to the "full screen portrait" perspective.

So, which unit would be a fitting next project? Here are the possibilities I'm currently considering:
-A protoss dark templar, cloaked in a flowing cape and with an ignited psi-blade. I imagine many particles (perhaps from a flame) flowing through the image...
-A ghost (male or female?), set against a possible "nuclear winter" background, nukes, battlecruisers, dead zerg.... something like that. Snow particles, cigarette smoke, dust and debris.
-Kerrigan (in infected form), similar composition as the terran medic. However, this has already been done by a friend on deviantart (Amazing stuff!).

Still, I'm open to any suggestions related to the starcraft universe! I might include quick sketches to further describe my ideas, but feel free to provide some to explain yours!! I WILL give credit if I get my "breakthrough" idea here!

Thanks in advance!
-Nicolas Kudeljan (Vonschlippe)