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Messages - flaber
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1
Pixel Art / Re: [WIP] Process of a Girl
« on: June 09, 2010, 07:23:37 am »
After quite a break, Iv decided to come back to this.
Now that Iv got no more school work, and more spare time, Id like to try and finish this.

After the time away, and coming back, I realized and saw alot of errors and flaws.
I took your advice Stefano and tried to use better anatomy.
I ended up using several different references throughout this recreating.

To stay in theme of the thread, Ill post all my steps from the last image I posted, to the current spot I am at:




Here is my most current version:


Iv been staring at this for awhile now and Im sure I am overlooking errors.
Obviously I havent touched the neck or hair yet.

I would really appreciate any comments and critiques about this. Id like to continue working her to get a good shape.

-----
Things I still need to do:
Change the palette / colors, as Im not happy with her skin tone. Its just a place holder to define her form.
Finish her neck/ear.
Rework the hair.
Once iv blocked out all the shapes/shades I can blend and texture, and add finer details.

Hopefully this is a good improvement over my last post, as I spent alot of time referencing anatomy and referencing photos.
Thanks again in advance for any input you have!
 


2
Pixel Art / Re: [WIP] Process of a Girl
« on: January 05, 2010, 10:30:54 pm »
Thanks for the edit Stefano, your sketch pointed out a couple of things that I had overlooked.

As mentioned before, I was going to play with hair for this edit. In complete honesty, I do not like it.
But here is the process:




Im not really happy with this, thus why I only did half the head. The bottom middle, and bottom right, are essentially the same with just a few differences.
Although this was not a successful edit, again, I wanted to share and show what went on. Even though It did not work, I still learnt from it.

I have found myself several references for hair and faces. So my next edit should have more guidance.

for the next edit, Im planning to revamp the face with references, to make it more life like, and believable.
Not sure If I will touch hair at this point or not.
But the plan is, from this point on, to be using refs, and to be taking close care with the edits. No longer blocking things out, now Im focusing on making it better.

**Note:
I did nothing to the face during this edit.

3
Pixel Art / [WIP] Process of a Girl [June 9]
« on: January 02, 2010, 10:02:35 am »
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CURRENT [June 9]
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Id appreciate any comments and crits you may have.
See the post below for process.



(Original post, for reference)
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PRE-RAMBLE
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I looked through the lineart thread, and 1 particular image caught my attention. Im on my christmas break from university, and thought it might be fun to do up a quick doodle. Unfortunately that changed for me very fast. As I began working and getting back into pixeling I realized I havent posted any original pixelart since sometime 2007. As I was working on this, I kept changing my mind, and my approach and direction. I generally save most of my steps, and figured this might be an interesting project to share.

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PURPOSE OF THREAD
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Currently the purpose of this thread is for me to share and show my progress through this piece. I will post my previous steps and give some explanations as to why and what I did, and to where I am headed. Right now there may not be much technical discussion, but hopefully within my later steps that will come. Its been interesting for me in the past to look at other peoples approaches, and thus I figured I would share this. I have a long way to go, and alot more to work on.

--------------------

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PREVIOUS STEPS
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-MSpaint
-using mouse
-no references


Originally I stumbled upon the lineart on the left by sohashu. It intrigued me and I was just going to make it a quick doodle. The original lineart was blown up to 3X, and therefor I shrunk it down to work on it. Before I ever work on something, I like to have very clean lines. As can be seen by the face in red, I quickly cleaned up the lines, defined the face before I would begin to color. If I have clean and clearly defined lines, then I find it easier to block in colors (discussed later) before I add my texture and blending.


Since this was supposed to be a quick and easy project, more for personal fun than to show, I chose arbitrary colors from a previous unfinished piece of mine. Which is why she has green hair, and poor skin color (this will be fixed later). As I completed the little face, I realized it just didnt have that same flair that the initial lineart grabbed me with. I recognized that one of the attractions of the original lines was the size. This is when I knew that this project was going to turn into something much much larger. I blew up my small doodle to 3X, and began to sit and think of how could I approach this at the new size.


**NOTE: for some reason this isnt at full size? photobucket shrunk it. Im not going to change it, you get the idea**
One of my initial approaches I took to the resized image was just seeing if I could smooth out the original pixels I blew up. By going back and adding small curves between each. This proved to be a horrible failure. At such an increased size, the amount of detail and control I have over the face is much more than the small version. This meant I would need to completely redraw and revamp the face. I got rid of all the previous shading and just left the key features of the face such as the eyes, nose and mouth. I felt I had alright placements in the small version for these, and therefore I used them as guidlines when re-drawing the face. The eyes, nose and mouth are essentially the same as before.

Once I got the lines cleaned up to a decent point, I needed to start blocking in my colors. As can be seen by the centre image, I start by defining where the highlighted and shadowed areas of the face will be. At this point I have it very angular and very harsh. From past projects I have done, when I go for the final blending and texturing, it will naturally smoothen out. The third image just illustrates the continuation of the process by layering more and more colors onto the face.


After a while of playing I feel at this point I have blocked out the face well enough, to put it on hold for now. I quickly roughed in the neck and ear within 3 mins just to get a feel for them. Like my lines, I like my block colors to very clean, with nice curves. When they are tidy, there is then no noise to deal with for texturing and blending later on. The lines and block colors are important steps for me as they give me a base concept of the direction I am going.
Much Like the face, I knew the hair needed to be redone completely as well. I therefore deleted all the previous hair, and will have to create new lines for it from scratch.

The face is not done. Just on hold, so I can work on the hair.

***If you are interested in further detail of any of the steps just ask. I have more images on development of hair, and block shading, but I chose these as they were most significant.
--------------------

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CURRENT STAGE
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I have now just finished defining the hair through lines. Looking at the silhouette of the hair, I tried to imagine and visualize what kind of hair could fit that shape. I decided that a bit of curly hair would be great. The top portion over her forehead is more flat, and the hair behind her neck would be a thick curly mess. I then just tried to sweep the hair into such a shape that it would fit the black space. I found this to be a long process, as I wasn't sure exactly where I was going with it. For nearly every strand I drew I zoomed out to see if it did what I wanted it to. Within the thick mess, I went back after and added more strands to interweave in between the curls. For areas like this, this is where clean lineart proves to be very very helpful. Now when going back to block in colors I will know where and what shapes to use.

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WHERE NEXT / WHAT NOW
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Currently I am blocking in the hair, and should hopefully have an update soon.

Once I have finished blocking in the hair, then 'stage 1' will be done. I consider this stage to be very very rough. Alot of flaws with anatomy, lighting, volume/depth, colors (I know, I have used probably more colors than you would have. thats okay for me right now), etc. Pretty well every aspect of it has flaws, and there would be alot of C+C for this right now. But thats fine, as there is still quite a ways before I am finished. I see alot of the issues, and will come back to them later. Anything that has been done, is not finalized and will be changed. This is fleshing out the concept, so I can get a grasp of what I want as a finished product.

I will probably do 2 more 'stages'. A rendering stage which include texturing, color refinement, volume defining, and blending. This stage should correct alot of the larger flaws, and during this time I will be more interested in C+C. This stage will bring the image closer to completion.

The final stage will come down to nit-picky refinement, where I will play with each pixel individually till I have exactly what I want, or to the best of my abilities. there should not be any large changes I will be making during this point, rather this is putting on the final touches.

As mentioned above currently I am just sharing my progress, and not too worried about C+C at this point. Shortly within a few edits, that will change.
Hopefully by sharing my progress through this thread, a few others may find it beneficial.
I know my techniques are slow, and some not needed, but this is also a learning project for me as well.

Hopefully I will have an update soon.



4
Pixel Art / Re: Graffiti Ghosting (to do or not to do)
« on: August 13, 2009, 04:14:48 am »
Its been awhile since iv touched any pixels
but figured id make you an edit


the spray looked too much like 3 transparent paperthin layers, stacked ontop of each other.
There was also no sense of it dissipating.
Here is a quick example at providing abit more depth, and some of the dissipation.
(I added some turbulance to the fluid flow as its Reynolds number proved it be turbulant instead of laminar flow, haha for those who get it.)

please, also try to stay away from 50% dither.
There may be times when it is needed, or in certain amounts. But not an entire section. There are other techniques for blending and texturing

5
General Discussion / Re: Photoshop Peripherals
« on: May 08, 2009, 07:12:18 am »
This is rather interesting idea, and the more i think about it, the more it entices me.

i will suggest this to some of my friends in engineering with me. For our 4th year project occasionally they let students suggest projects to work on.
I can see atleast 3 slides, RGB, or HSL (as i like to use in MSpaint). alittle led screen to display the color mixed, some buttons for pressure, or some buttons for some hot keys. a slider for zoom. very cool.
take the tools bar and make it physical.

ill see if i can convince people to think about working with this.

6
ya, all i meant was to build an animated gif file from loaded frames.
but i saw on the alpha version i tried you have a button for animation. So im guessing you have that figured out.

Color system is alittle bit different, and would take time for me to get used to. The HSV. but thats more me than you. It still the same idea as the HSL im used to. so thats not bad.

The only other thing - is I dont like it opening full screen.
Id still like to be able to see my task bar, and switch between programs easily without closing it with escape button.
otherwise looking good.

7
well thats fair.
your doing this just as a side project.
And if GUI is out of your realm, thats fine.
im interested to see a demo.

Also - the one last other thing that I forgot to mention would be nice.
would be simple gif animation compiler.
a simple animation option would be absolutly prime.

8
Hey,
so i havent gotten a chance to read this whole thread yet, since its numerous pages long..
but ill still suggest a few things.
sorry if they have already been mentioned.

for color selection; one thing that i really like, and use with most programs i can is numerical values.
In MSpaint, and Corel Painter IX, both have color sliders as well as Hue, Sat, Lum numerical options.
I choose most of my colors, and have memorized color combinations off of their number values. So I dont know if you have this included.. or if its just straight sliders. I seem to spend way too much time playing with sliders than need be.

atleast one transparency that you can set to any color, like in MSpaint. Nothing even fancy, with different percentages of transparency. Just full or not.

Layers. Layers would be super beneficial. And again, not even necessarily have to worry about it being at different opacity percentages. Just plain layering, nothing fancy. For such things as tracing sketches, or for pattern experimenting.

For colors.. If you could have a finished image.. and color slider the whole thing.. Not sure what the proper term is, but you can do it in Painter IX, and photoshop. Where you adjust all colors together, so their ratios are all the same, but changing together.. So you can turn the whole thing red, or blue, or green, etc.

Lastly, which goes along with Alex
is I like a clean workspace. The programs I use are MSpaint (which already has nothing to it..), Corel Painter IX, and Adobe Illustrator. With Painter IX and Illustrator I like to try and have as least as possible options and featurs open.
As I need something Ill pull it open from the top, and then close its window after.. or minimize it.
So, Im not saying anyting fancy like mouse over options.. or minimizing each section.. But if you could turn things on or off.
And access it at the top bar. MSpaint has this option under View. I refer to that, because that seems to an industry minimum standard.

Just my few suggestions. sorry if these are all repeats, or if you have these done already.


9
General Discussion / Re: Official Off-Topic Thread
« on: December 11, 2008, 09:00:15 am »
perfect.
thats exactly what i was looking for.
thanks

10
General Discussion / Re: Official Off-Topic Thread
« on: December 11, 2008, 12:02:31 am »
question:
There was a special effect someone outlined here once upon a time on how to do.
Giving an image, scan lines? Where you take your finished imaged and break it down into horizontal bars, with 2 images. You slightly offset the colors or so for the horizontal bars on each image, and when compiled it looked, holographic i think?
Cant quite remember who did it, or what they called it.
anyone have any recollection of this?

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