Well, I'm begining to learn how to use photoshop for my characters. I have a deviantArt page, if you want to check out. I'm just begining to put color and background to my pencil draws. Tell me what you think:
The link to my deviantart page is on the blue image of my signature. If you have sketches I could try to color them. Will use the training!
I think you'e doing well for someone who's just started out; the basic of what you do to colour a pic stay the same as you get to grips with the program; it's just little techniques to do with the other tools available that you'll lean, that improve the quality of what you can do. Are you doing your colouring on a separate layer?
A couple of things I could suggest for you to try out:
* Duplicate your backround layer (naming it 'line art' helps to keep your layers organised), you want to make the lines as black as possible and to minimise your shading. Go to Image>Adjustments>Contrast & Brightness and Levels and play about with it until you get a decent picture. Then bring the layer to the top and set the blending mode to Overlay or Multiply. This will give you picture some good definition.
* When building up you shading, don't forget that you can drop the flow or opacity of your paintbrush down, this really helps make shading smooth.
*make use of selections; With your new line art layer it should be really easy to use the Magnetic Selection Tool to pick out areas to colour. With the specific area chosen shading is helped a lot by using the Gradient tool (with a light and a dark shade of your colour selected) to give you a base to work from.
*Experiment with different Layer Blending Modes.
Would you mind poping the pics in your first post in sblocks please? just to help keep the thread tidy
Awesome work on Crag, Fragsie! Is there any way you could make Crag's shield look like it was shaped out of stone/earth rather than being metal? I love the feet, that looks AWESOME! Would it be hard to add that same effect to his hands/arms or even the rest of his body?
I did try with the same texture on the shield, but thought it looked a bit odd; I could have a go at trying some different things out though. I could quite easily add the earthen colouring to Crags arms or body, I think the picture might loose some of it's 'action' if I did the whole lot though, I think it looks like the picture has caught him in the middle of some transformation, which is kind cool
Generally speaking, the intended effect is that he resembles dragons more closely than the usual Dragonborn, with scale color, crest, tail, etc...
So, anything you can do to emphasize that would be great. For the background, something a bit darker/forest-y would be better, but it's less important than Rujah himself, obviously.
I greatly appreciate the work, as I'm sure this isn't precisely easy. (I tend to end up with characters who I find it hard to find images for, lol)
The background won't be difficult at all; i'll probably transpose a Rujah onto a different picture. Don't worry about the awkwardness of finding/modding a picture, It just means I have more of a challenge
Hey Fragsie, your work looks great!
I would humbly request a portrait of my character Rhole, a gnome bard rockstar who uses his goatee as guitar-strings.
While concept and personality in part is influenced by Tenacious D’s Jack Black, the main inspiration for attitude and appearance comes from this image of Jimi Hendrix:
The most important changes that are requested, however, are just extending Jimi’s goatee to the rear of the guitar to become strings and changing his eyes to gnome-style.
I would be immensely grateful for anything you could do!
Thankyou for the kudos, any chance of you posting a little sketch of how you want the beard attached to the guitar? needn't be anything spectacular; just so I know what to do.