So there's a Comic Expo coming up next weekend and I'm making 3 posters. Cheetara, Baroness and Scarlet. Here's the WIP before I murder it with my terrible coloring skills.
Any suggestions before I head into the final stages.
Is it the neck? I was trying to give her a bit of a look between cat, tough and girl. I mean, she has to fight and stuff. Maybe I'll trim the neck a bit.
In the closeup, it's the neck, too wide. In the small one, it's her chin, like Jay Leno or a JRjr Mary Jane Watson. In the other picture, the broad has a narrow jaw in the closeup, but a real wide one in the other shot. I suggest making it more narrow.
Also in your closeups, your ears are way too small.
Cheetara's ear doesn't seem too small for me. Of course, I use the old How To Draw Comics The Marvel Way proportioning for most of the stuff I draw. Scarlett's pose is really good, but her ear seems too small in the closeup. The necks aren't long, but these two are built like in shape realistic women.
Cheers to the realistic proportions...and, these are sketches, after all.
paint with greyscale > filter [pixelate - color halftone]
settings - all channels set to 45 and Max. Radius is completely up to your desired look. I start at about 8 or 5 and work my way one way or the other. This here is 12 on 11x17 at 300dpi.
You just need to be careful about scaling as certain scaling will take away the dots and give you a weird patterned effect (usually from having too small of dots.
Next, depending on your desired effect, Multiple or Color Burn for the transfer effect (is what I usually use, but you can experiment with other transfer modes). When using burn, it may look ok in layers, but once flattened it screws up, so you have to change the levels of your dot layer to be slightly grey and not full black so change the black output level to 5 or 10 or whatever your desired effect may be.
here's an example of the toning with regular greyscale for a comic I did.
It takes some experimentation to know the outcome of your grey tone over an image, it can come out light or darker than you imagined. When doing the black and white comic, I had a formula and a tone for all my screens.
Thanks. It was actually a few hours of failed coloring attempts that made me finally decide "let's shift to a different gear and see what happens" ... aka: not my original plan for the pieces.
Took a break from Cheetara to work on Scarlet.
I plan on doing the half-tone effect for the close-ups and "normal" coloring for the poses.
I actually really like that low res background, even though I would have thought it would be impossible to make something like that look cool. It looks really cool!
It looks like the old action figure file cards! :^:
However, now that you've got some color slapped on there, I can't help but notice how small Scarlett's ear looks. The lobe should around the bottom of the nose/philtrum.
My only other critique would be the color of the lines around her face in the larger portrait. To me, it doesn't seem to fit as well with all the other lines of various color.
It looks like the old action figure file cards! :^:
Yay! I hope more people get that when they see it.
Right now I have to complete the other pieces, but if I feel I have time, I'll tweak that ear and the lines are a bit off. I realized after I had forgotten to fix the ear size.
edit: okay fine, I did some tweaks right now. Ears are still the same ... changed line work/colors mainly.
MustangArbiter of Unpopular OpinionsRegistered Userregular
edited April 2009
The arm is too short, which makes it look like you've tried to foreshorten it, which is why the gun looks like it's pointing the wrong way. Does that make sense?
Crossbow at an angle is bitch hard to get. I have zero reference. I had actually first drew a gun with a cool silencer and it looked awesome (trust me! my mom thinks I'm cool too!) but then I remembered "iconically" she doesn't have a gun but a crossbow .... FUUUUUUUCK .... a gun is easy because it basically straight. Crossbow is straight one way, then the arms out the side, and then the goddamn arrow to try and draw at perspective without making it look all goofy (BEEYARR THIS IS AN ARROW!). So anyways, yeah, it's better than my first 5 attempts at drawing it in perspective - I just imagine it's still a gun (it was so sweet!)
also your coloring isn't as bad as you say it was.
I compare myself to good colorists and look at my stuff and think "well, this could have been a whole lot better if I wasn't such a douche"
I don't mean to be one of those self-depreciating artists, so thanks for the coloring compliments. I just wish I could actually pull off what I see in my head.
I pushed this deadline to close to printing. Maybe v2 I can make them better, but I really want to get my Baroness out the door. Ack, I'll have to live without changing for now.
I was going for positioning to sort of be the opposite of Scarlet. I just didn't want to have 3 posters with all the heads in the same spot ... I was trying to break it up. But, I can't anymore tonight, I'll have to finish it tomorrow.
Jeezus, this is why I hate inking - either I'm not good at it, or it takes me forever to do it ... this is just over an hour's work - just the little bit of inking in the corner.
however, you should work on consistency with your facial proportions. Each of your closeups has completely different nose/brow/cheekbone/chin/ear/jawline relationships than your full body shots of the same character.
And where the ear on your Baroness' closeup is fine, the smaller picture of her has a tiny baby ear.
Hmmm ... okay, smoke. I was going to do it myself, but I've become so sick of all this now ... haha. Let me try my own smoke. (the smoke is a hi rez brush - which I tweaked, but sure, I cheaped out - I'll go back and see.)
Also if your going to use a smoke brush or smoke photo, use a seperate layer and set it to screen before stamping. It will make a big difference. Don't forget that even smoke has reflective properties with the surrounding light. lower the opacity on the layer, and softly erase bits farther away from the barrel. thing is, with this specific style of comic art, using such realistic smoke sorta conflicts with the rest of the image.
Mykonos on
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
"I was born; six gun in my hand; behind the gun; I make my final stand"~Bad Company
still don't dig it. I'd draw in the smoke, and ink and color it like the rest of the pic.
ManonvonSuperock on
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MustangArbiter of Unpopular OpinionsRegistered Userregular
edited April 2009
It's better but it's too much smoke and why is it coming out of the side of the silencer? Does the silencer have holes in it? Generally they don't and when I say generally, I mean like never.
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Also in your closeups, your ears are way too small.
Cheers to the realistic proportions...and, these are sketches, after all.
settings - all channels set to 45 and Max. Radius is completely up to your desired look. I start at about 8 or 5 and work my way one way or the other. This here is 12 on 11x17 at 300dpi.
You just need to be careful about scaling as certain scaling will take away the dots and give you a weird patterned effect (usually from having too small of dots.
Next, depending on your desired effect, Multiple or Color Burn for the transfer effect (is what I usually use, but you can experiment with other transfer modes). When using burn, it may look ok in layers, but once flattened it screws up, so you have to change the levels of your dot layer to be slightly grey and not full black so change the black output level to 5 or 10 or whatever your desired effect may be.
here's an example of the toning with regular greyscale for a comic I did.
It takes some experimentation to know the outcome of your grey tone over an image, it can come out light or darker than you imagined. When doing the black and white comic, I had a formula and a tone for all my screens.
Took a break from Cheetara to work on Scarlet.
I plan on doing the half-tone effect for the close-ups and "normal" coloring for the poses.
I guess Baroness is delayed a day.
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However, now that you've got some color slapped on there, I can't help but notice how small Scarlett's ear looks. The lobe should around the bottom of the nose/philtrum.
My only other critique would be the color of the lines around her face in the larger portrait. To me, it doesn't seem to fit as well with all the other lines of various color.
Yay! I hope more people get that when they see it.
Right now I have to complete the other pieces, but if I feel I have time, I'll tweak that ear and the lines are a bit off. I realized after I had forgotten to fix the ear size.
edit: okay fine, I did some tweaks right now. Ears are still the same ... changed line work/colors mainly.
might be just me though
other than that, top notch!
also your coloring isn't as bad as you say it was.
"I was born; six gun in my hand; behind the gun; I make my final stand"~Bad Company
I compare myself to good colorists and look at my stuff and think "well, this could have been a whole lot better if I wasn't such a douche"
I don't mean to be one of those self-depreciating artists, so thanks for the coloring compliments. I just wish I could actually pull off what I see in my head.
The full body one still appears kinda manly however, minus teh boobies of course.
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I'm actually half-way happy with my coloring so far
I'd say so; the smoother line quality on this latest one blows the other two pics out of the water. :^:
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however, you should work on consistency with your facial proportions. Each of your closeups has completely different nose/brow/cheekbone/chin/ear/jawline relationships than your full body shots of the same character.
And where the ear on your Baroness' closeup is fine, the smaller picture of her has a tiny baby ear.
"I was born; six gun in my hand; behind the gun; I make my final stand"~Bad Company
Hmmm ... okay, smoke. I was going to do it myself, but I've become so sick of all this now ... haha. Let me try my own smoke. (the smoke is a hi rez brush - which I tweaked, but sure, I cheaped out - I'll go back and see.)
Fire? is it that overpowering?
Also if your going to use a smoke brush or smoke photo, use a seperate layer and set it to screen before stamping. It will make a big difference. Don't forget that even smoke has reflective properties with the surrounding light. lower the opacity on the layer, and softly erase bits farther away from the barrel. thing is, with this specific style of comic art, using such realistic smoke sorta conflicts with the rest of the image.
"I was born; six gun in my hand; behind the gun; I make my final stand"~Bad Company
I kinda agree with Manon though.