How would I "real-ify" an image?

[TholomewP]

If I want to take a drawing I made and make it look realistic, how would I do that? It's a doodle of a bird I drew, and I want to give it feathers and skin. Any help is appreciated!

[Hyptosis]

Dude, it'd totally be more easy to just grow your own real life bird.

Here are some helpful links-
http://www.gamebird.com/
http://www.lelandhayes.com/

Good luck, hope it helps!

[Vonschlippe]

I think I can be of some help here...

Photorealistic drawing does not involve a special trick if you want good results. The main idea is to learn to draw different textures (skin, fabric, feathers, hair, wood....) in the most realistic way possible before attempting such a painting.

Here are the main guidelines:
1 - Very fine level of detail: avoid having areas that are very sharp and others that lack resolution.
2 - Appropriate colors and textures: your colors should be based on what you see, not what you think is there. For instance, concrete is not always grey, as it can be yellow, blue, orange, depending on the surrounding light.
3 - Realistic lighting: you cannot paint anything remotely realistic if your light is inconsistant. This is perhaps the part that requires the most practice.
4 - Realistic optics: if your drawing incorporates depth of field, motion blur, lens flare, lighting bloom and other optical effects, you will need to be extra careful if you want it to look real
5 - Adding photo grain: a certain level of "random" in an image, in the form of photographic grain, adds tremendous realism in some situations.
6 - Avoid shortcuts. There are none.

To paint a realistic bird, make sure your doodle is exactly anatomically conform. You cannot cheat anatomy by adding details. Learn to render the look of feathers, think carefully of your lighting, and then practice. It's unlikely it will look good on the first try!

Hope that helps!

[TholomewP]

Thanks! Do you have any tips on technique?

[Vonschlippe]

At 4/5/11 08:24 PM, TholomewP wrote: Thanks! Do you have any tips on technique?

Many.

Do you have a pen tablet (Wacom Bamboo or the likes)? I can hardly imagine doing realism using a mouse or touch pad....

[TholomewP]

Nope.

[Vonschlippe]

At 4/5/11 08:38 PM, TholomewP wrote: Nope.

Well I wish you good luck in your project then :)

[TholomewP]

Haha maybe I'll just raise a bird instead like Hyptosis suggested.

[Smorsh]

At 4/5/11 08:11 PM, TholomewP wrote: If I want to take a drawing I made and make it look realistic, how would I do that? It's a doodle of a bird I drew, and I want to give it feathers and skin. Any help is appreciated!

I believe the term is "untoon". I've seen a video with someone making an untooned version of Jessica Rabbit, and they used photoshop to add bits from actual photos, but modified them to fit over the picture.

[Hyptosis]

At 4/5/11 08:41 PM, TholomewP wrote: Haha maybe I'll just raise a bird instead like Hyptosis suggested.

Haha, awesome. :D ^5

[TholomewP]

At 4/5/11 09:31 PM, Smorsh wrote:

At 4/5/11 08:11 PM, TholomewP wrote: If I want to take a drawing I made and make it look realistic, how would I do that? It's a doodle of a bird I drew, and I want to give it feathers and skin. Any help is appreciated!

I believe the term is "untoon". I've seen a video with someone making an untooned version of Jessica Rabbit, and they used photoshop to add bits from actual photos, but modified them to fit over the picture.

Yes! That's it! Thank you. I can't find a tutorial right now but when I do I'll post it here.

[TholomewP]

Here's the video of untooning Jessica Rabbit

[ornery]

At 4/5/11 08:39 PM, Vonschlippe wrote:

At 4/5/11 08:38 PM, TholomewP wrote: Nope.

Well I wish you good luck in your project then :)

Whatever happened to good ol' pencil and paper >:(

[Vonschlippe]

At 4/5/11 10:53 PM, ornery wrote:

At 4/5/11 08:39 PM, Vonschlippe wrote:

At 4/5/11 08:38 PM, TholomewP wrote: Nope.

Well I wish you good luck in your project then :)

Whatever happened to good ol' pencil and paper >:(

Hater's gonna hate.

More seriously, I just think I'm not the go-to person for realistic pencil portrait. I can sketch, but my rendering skills are limited to photoshop. That's all! :P

[ornery]

At 4/5/11 09:58 PM, TholomewP wrote: Here's the video of untooning Jessica Rabbit

Thats more tweaking the ever loving fuck out of photographs more than drawing.

[Hyptosis]

At 4/5/11 11:00 PM, ornery wrote:

At 4/5/11 09:58 PM, TholomewP wrote: Here's the video of untooning Jessica Rabbit

Thats more tweaking the ever loving fuck out of photographs more than drawing.

Technically the guy in the original post didn't say he wanted to paint realistically, or 'draw' so. He said he wants to make a drawing look real, which is exactly what the jessica rabbit thing does. =\

[TurkeyOnAStick]

At 4/6/11 09:46 AM, Hyptosis wrote:

At 4/5/11 11:00 PM, ornery wrote: Thats more tweaking the ever loving fuck out of photographs more than drawing.

Technically the guy in the original post didn't say he wanted to paint realistically, or 'draw' so. He said he wants to make a drawing look real, which is exactly what the jessica rabbit thing does. =\

I can see where orn's coming from, and possibly why he doesn't have a high opinion of it.
Before I watched the vid I thought pixeloo would have used some special brushes to get that realistic look.
After watching the vid some of that magic is lost, since it's smearing a photo (ok, ok, parts of a photo) with Liquify to get it in the right shape + touch-ups.

I'm not sure how this would be applied to a realistic drawing of a bird - if you're after realism in this way you could take a decent photograph, rather than creating some Frankenstein's Mallard. It's stuff like this in Phtoshop where it's blurring the lines of your own creativity, with copy and pasting something that already exists anyway.

I think the method is cool, and gets interesting results, but I think it seems more creative to use it as a method to create an alternative skin, rather than a way to get similar results to what you're trying to draw.

At 4/5/11 10:57 PM, Vonschlippe wrote: Hater's gonna hate.

I hate this damn phrase >:@ rarararar

[bigjonny13]

At 4/6/11 10:28 AM, TurkeyOnAStick wrote: Before I watched the vid I thought pixeloo would have used some special brushes to get that realistic look.
After watching the vid some of that magic is lost, since it's smearing a photo (ok, ok, parts of a photo) with Liquify to get it in the right shape + touch-ups.

Yeah, I always thought that pixeloo was just a rad artist. After seeing that video, I feel just like I did after watching The Phantom Menace - extremely disappointed and sad.