Are you
1) using the pencil tool?
2) is your brush in "dissolve"?
3) is antialiasing turned on?

At 7/10/09 08:23 AM, Nqkoi1 wrote: I just know that I'm going to get laughted and kicked in the chin for this, but how does one set a DPI on a photoshop file?I've only adjusted the Pixels per inch..not dots :/..is that the same thing?

To adjust the Pixels Per Inch (PPI), go to Image > Image Size. There you can adjust width, height, and resolution.

Secondly, you are mixing up DPI (Dots Per Inch) and Pixels Per Inch. DPI is relevant only in scanning and printing, either how many points sampled per inch, or how much dots per square inch in print. PPI is the number of pixels per inch in your image, affecting quality/detail of output.

At 7/7/09 06:42 PM, mikxs wrote: Backstory
Praise for newgrounds
Example of art!

Welcome to NG. I see you've mirrored your image, that's off to a good start. :P

You're drawing well for a 14 year old, even better than I was back when I was your age. If you keep drawing I'll have no doubt that you'll be a good artist/animator. Funny thing though, your grades now don't really matter; its the connections you have (make some friends!) and your portfolio that will matter the most, along with your personality. A lot of it has to do with dedication and patience, and just the ability to churn out art without burning out.

Anyhow, I'll give you a few critiques. Pay attention to foreshortening, fix up a bit on anatomy (only slightly off), and remember to plant the feet first when drawing the character - otherwise he/she seems to be floating in mid-space, albeit in pose. Also consider checking out the proportions of a face. ;)

Good luck!

Feeling nostalgic, when there were actually good cartoons on TV.

Much praise to you, keep up the good work!

At 7/7/09 04:06 PM, ecolp1994 wrote: all you have to do is just use sketch lines, more than just one. and then things will look more complicated without actually being all that hard.

Bad advice, drawing clean is the best way to go. Drawing "messy" or "sketchy" is a shortcut that only undermines the quality of the overall work. It only appears to be complex. You're not adding any detail, you are adding vague lines that imply/suggest detail. If you get into the bad habit of sketchy/broken lines, then you will have a hard time finding form and figuring out your lines, especially during inking and coloring. When you finish and polish a piece, sketchy lines make it look amateur and lazy.

Detail is detail. Sketchy lines is for sketching/blocking.

At 7/7/09 11:24 AM, test-object wrote:

At 7/7/09 11:15 AM, VinnyXY wrote: I actually kinda like the details in it. Not bad.

Are you kidding me? What details?

@OP: Start on paper or buy a wacom. We can't criticize this in a constructive way. Drawing with a mouse is like drawing with a piece of soap.

Do NOT buy a Wacom until you are sure you are committed to art!

Pen and paper is the fastest, cheapest, and most convenient way to go. Having a tablet does not improve your art. Picking up a pencil and drawing, however, does.

For pen tablets, Wacom is pretty much the industry standard. Depending on your budget, you can go low end Bamboo series for ~$100, or high end Intuos3 ~$150-300, or higher end Intuos4 ~300+, or if you have $1000 or $2000 lying about then a Cintiq. Although, if you are a first time user, you may want to go for Bamboo first because a new tablet is a big investment.

Alternatively you can check Craigslist, Wacom tablets have no moving parts and do not break.

P.S. READ THE ART FORUM RULES!

At 7/5/09 04:07 AM, Maverick22 wrote: So... yeah.
It's not like imposting crap or stick figures. =(

For the umpteenth time, someone along the scouting branch got unscouted, or someone you scouted (and their scouts) posted crap.

Snap, forgot the picture! Here it is, silly me.

At 7/5/09 12:26 AM, Shishizurui wrote: here i wasted more time progressing forward its like tearing out my nails trying to climb up a building. it just doesn't work.

Hmmm, I think there's a slight problem with anatomy, I've taken the liberty of taking your picture, flipping it horizontally, and then red-lining it. The primary issue I see is the head proportion in relation to the whole body (for girl with gun). I also took the liberty of posting the head-heights to illustrate my example.

For the younger girl, the same issue was with the head, which I felt was awkward (mostly hair). You may want to tilt her head upwards (exaggerate a bit) if she is looking at the older woman's face, or downward and towards the gun (we see more of her face) if her focus is that. (However the rest of her body is good. As a suggestion (not necessarily to be followed 100%), her hands should extend in the same direction of where her feet are going.

If her intention is to grab the gun, I suggest moving the little girl towards the left and lowered slightly so that she is in front of the older woman perspective-wise. Right now she is to the "right" (our right), and should she continue moving forward, completely miss the older woman.

Any chance you could do some varied line weights? That could help a lot. ;)

You're off to a good start, fairly impressive coloring! :)

For critiquing, I notice two things that stand out the most.

1) There's a discrepancy between the foreground and background. This is true for both cases but in two different ways; in your first work you have a wonderfully colored (and fearsome) black dragon, but you choose to compliment it with a strong blue and brown. Without a complimentary or unifying color theme, the objects pop out from its settings and so the immerson of the picture is ruined. In the second example, the perspectives of the dragon and the tree don't match; the dragon appears to be on flat ground, while the tree is vertical.

2) In the second example, again you start off good, but end with an odd tree bark against an open sky. Normally that's acceptable, but to increaser the "wow!" factor it's nice to give the focus some context; perhaps it is on one tree trunk of many charred/blacked out trees in a forest. Or perhaps it is a fallen trunk on the ground, and the dragon is ready to pounce (its pose suggests that.)

Do continue to post, the first work is awesome.

At 7/2/09 08:17 AM, vylent wrote:

It definitely provokes a reaction, but I'm rather stumped on how exactly to describe it.

haha stumped

touche, touche.

I think its moreso the shape of the hill that's the problem. The shape of the hill isn't obvious to the viewer immediately, because of its awkward shape, especially where it meets the water and the tree trunk. It looks somewhat like a blob or top of a head.

But coloring it in earthly tones would help.

At 6/30/09 03:29 PM, n-nnnn wrote: wats filter rape?

Overuse of filters and leveling/burning, which makes the picture worse than it was originally.

I forsee a surplus of Section A and B submissions, as lips/mouth are a lot harder to do than eyes, and the hair is a lot more fun to draw. :P

Quick sketch, copic markers.

This is most excellent work! I love how you did the hair, could you give me a few tips on how to do that?

Here's a new work, this time a portrait. For much higher quality version: http://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/saker falcon/sanyu-hikari

This work was a reinterpretation of a 2007 original anime character, found here: http://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/saker falcon/hikari-05

Enjoy! :D

At 6/27/09 07:08 PM, Mercenary81 wrote: All i can do with a gradient right now is color the whole canvas, am i missing something here?

You can use quick masking, lasso tool, or the rectangular marquee.

Just for the sake of making things easier to see - your submission, properly adjusted:

Try to avoid overly large eyes. This may be for stylistic purposes, but if done incorrectly it seems overly anime-cliched. Eyes that eat up the whole face is, well, not pretty. :P Second (and probably the most important), reduce the slant on your drawing. Right now the drawing is slanted to the right (especially the head). It helps to flip the image (or paper) over and hold it to bright light to see a ''mirror' image to see mistakes. This slant needs to be ironed out, and will go away with practice over time.

Third, look for some books on basic anatomy. It's good to use blocks/shapes for basic human construction, but make sure you know what sort of shapes to use. ;)

Keep submitting though, good luck!

At 6/27/09 06:42 PM, PurpleElephant21 wrote: i have this drawing but i dont know what i should color it

I'm thinking of a light tan / beige, with primarily red for the patterns. You may want to outline with pen for cleaner quality and boldness, or erase some of the pencil work for cleaner lines before applying color.

Also, please refrain from making multiple threads if they are about the same works. You should post this picture and question under your t-shirt thread.

At 6/27/09 03:43 AM, Rekikia wrote: Here is my version of Misa I did with the gimp on Linux...Hope you like... :) Want to see more? Mail me on here or go to my site on DA..! http://rekikia.deviantart.com/

Please tell me what you think? :D :)

Seems like a color adjustment of Misa from a screencap of Death Note, which:

1) is not original artwork
2) original coloring

And what is with the box on the bottom left?

Hmm, it does remind me of another work, at least on the lineart stages with the initial building layout and the window patterns.

Buildings should also appear smaller (and less wide/less deep) the closer they are to the vanishing point.

As for coloring in Photoshop, it helps to block in colors for all the buildings first, and then decide on a background color. It helps if you reduce the line thickness a bit, because that makes the buildings look more congested. You may also consider aligning the windows so it looks less random.

If you do solid color blocking and more consistent gradients (gradient tool is your friend!) the coloring on the buildings will look more uniform and less stroke-y, and neater. You can go back and add details with small brushes after you've applied general colors.

For lighting effects, remember you can always work with layers, and either use low-opacity brush, linear dodge, or something to that effect. These work best if you do not have the lights outlined.

Also avoid doing special effects such as rain until you have finalized the buildings, because the cloud/myst/fog and other stuff distract from seeing the actual colors. And it makes further changes easier. ;)

P.S. 1984 is an excellent book. If you liked Farenheit 451 you should consider reading it.

At 6/26/09 03:35 AM, psychicpebble wrote: Hey, I'm starting a new series and I drew the living room. Tell me what you guys think so far.

Some feedback would be great. Please leave both what you like and what I need to improve on.

Check your perspective. It seems a bit off.

Also, make the text smaller; the art should be the main focus of the piece, the type should only be a supplement to the subject.

At 6/23/09 06:07 PM, kingdragonreaper wrote:

At 6/23/09 06:01 PM, TheDaveAngle wrote: posting links to your images is fine as long as you post a Jpeg copy of the same picture in the thread.

Alright, I'll make a jpeg copy. Hope it doesn't lose to much quality ;_;

Sooo, do I make a new topic and have this one deleted somehow. Or do I just post the new info in this thread?

Keep it in this thread, don't make any more new posts.

Besides, if you were to post your picture here it would be limited to 700px high, so the JPEG loss is minimal. Besides, you probably have a master copy on your HDD and a higher-quality one on your DA. It's not like JPEG compression is super noticeable.

At 6/23/09 04:04 PM, J-qb wrote: Yesterday I installed Internet Explorer 8, and since then I havent been able to acces the interwebs. I am still in the process of reading up on all thread progress till about 6 hours ago (when I finally got internet to work again (ie7)), after which I will have to catch up with all the posts of the past six hours (im a tab-maniac).
I just thought Id share this with you guys (extract from second page of art portal)

Perhaps the moderators should have the ability to delete threads, just so the threads don't spam up the forum.

At 6/23/09 02:35 PM, EnhancedPerspective wrote: Didnt know if I should make a new topic.... I dicided to put this here first.

Just got a tablet, my very first one. It is a Wacom Bamboo Fun Black Medium. Loving the software that comes with it. I come to you senior flash (yes I posted this in the flash regs forum too) /art citizens to ask you for drawing tips with the tablet. Also, does anyone know how to customize the keys on the top in Flash (CS4 if you were wondering)? Ive tried to figure it out myself/googled it, no results. Any help would be very appreciated.

There should be a Wacom driver that you have to install. Part of that Wacom driver is a program which you can personalize your settings such as sensitivity, what the buttons do, etc. Try going to the start menu and looking for a "Wacom Tablet" folder.

As for tablet use, it is like learning how to use a pencil all over again. I would recommend drawing lines (horizontal and vertical) edge-to-edge until you can draw straight lines. Until then, you have not mastered controlling your pen. It just comes with a lot of practice and patience. Playing flash games or substituting normal mouse usage with your pen is a quick way to jump-start the learning on the sensitivity/how far you have to move your arm, etc.

At 6/23/09 02:49 PM, big-jonny-13 wrote:

At 6/23/09 02:46 PM, sakerfalcon wrote: Bonus points to those who can identify this amusingly yet frustrating game.

A Boy and His Blob?

Quite so!

Bonus points to those who can identify this amusingly yet frustrating game.