Wolf Rider portrait

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JAP
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Re: Wolf Rider portrait

Post by JAP »

Right... So, thinner outlines?
Some of them, the two things that looks to me like they have strangely thick outlines when i give it a quick glance is his helmet and beard.
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Thrawn
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Re: Wolf Rider portrait

Post by Thrawn »

Girgistian wrote:Right... So, thinner outlines?
Not quite. I think Kitty's portrait tut. goes over this better than I could, as does this

Hope this helps!
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this goes for they're/their/there as well
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Jetrel
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Re: Wolf Rider portrait

Post by Jetrel »

Sangel wrote:He looks so... sombre. As if he's resigned to an unpleasant fate. :(

It looks commitworthy to me, but I'm no Art Developer. Jetryl?
:( Completely non-commitworthy, unfortunately. I tend to keep my mouth shut too long on these sorts of things, wishing they'll resolve themselves - shame on me.

The problem is basically that girgistan, although he's very good at doing the line drawing itself; good at the anatomy, good at the posing, good at the composition, etc - he unfortunately has no idea how to shade. This is pillowshading - there's no logic, sense, or connection to reality in it.

Potential solutions:
1] I take his sketches and ink/color them
2] I teach him how to shade.

I'll probably try #2 anyways. It'll be a sizeable block of text, though, so I'll post it later (e.g. when I'm not about to go to bed). In short - right now, he's kinda shading based on gut feeling - and this in his case is tending to be the classic "pillowshade", which means that surfaces facing most directly at the camera/audience are bright, and surfaces facing away are dark. Shading is fortunately something that is completely describable by math - you can exaggerate certain factors to "stylize" your shading, but if one was trying to be strictly realistic, the job can be reduced to strictly mathematical work. CG has proven this - it's asymptotically approaching realism, and given another decade or two, we really won't be able to tell the difference. So if a computer can do it - you can too. It's not some kind of "art voodoo" that can't be described or taught.

I should probably update my global tutorial on shading, though, rather than dropping another pile of text in a forum thread - right now the thing's a freaking mess, and if I write this, I may as well write it generally and for everyone. Expect something over the next week or so (written during downtime at work). Prod me if I'm late about it.


So in short: Girgistan's work -is- salvageable, and can be made into something truly as good as the ideal mainline portraits; it just needs to have this one (major) thing fixed about it.
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Girgistian
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Re: Wolf Rider portrait

Post by Girgistian »

Right. So feel free to use these in user made campaigns if you like.
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irrevenant
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Re: Wolf Rider portrait

Post by irrevenant »

Girgistian wrote:Right. So feel free to use these in user made campaigns if you like.
Heck, I'm going to write in a part just to fit this portrait! (Not soon, sadly - very busy at the moment. :( )
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Jetrel
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Re: Wolf Rider portrait

Post by Jetrel »

Girgistian wrote:Right. So feel free to use these in user made campaigns if you like.
No, I'm not rejecting your work categorically. The drawings themselves are excellent (most of them, at least). It's only the shading where things fall down.

The drawings themselves would be good enough for mainline, but to be good enough as a finished product, they're probably going to need to be colored/shaded by someone else. (This is a fairly normal workflow for print comics, btw.) Don't feel as though I've slammed your work and said it'll never go in-game - I didn't. Your work is good, and I'll do what I can to color it well (It'll probably have to be me that colors them).

If you want to be useful - try making sketches for additional undead units; if they're as good as the skeleton warrior you made, they'll be useable in mainline.
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Sangel
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Re: Wolf Rider portrait

Post by Sangel »

I had a gnawing feeling that Jetryl was holding back comment for that reason...

In any case Girgistian, I'd like to add that I'm confident you could improve your shading abilities to Kitty or Jetryl's level. As Jetryl has already pointed out, all your other art skills are solid; in addition to being a solid foundation, it suggests an affinity for art that can be honed even further.

Jetryl's written a solid primer on the subject in the Art Wiki (somehow missing its images?), while Kitty's Tutorial takes a more hands-on approach to the exact techniques to achieve those ends. It'd doubtless take some sustained effort, but the end result would be an even stronger talent for art.
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Girgistian
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Re: Wolf Rider portrait

Post by Girgistian »

Jetryl wrote:No, I'm not rejecting your work categorically. The drawings themselves are excellent (most of them, at least). It's only the shading where things fall down.
Yeah, that's what you said in your previous message, and I do know I've got a lot to improve with the shading. I've been colouring my work only for a bit over a year now so the shading's kind of a new thing. Lack of experience and professional feedback, really.
The drawings themselves would be good enough for mainline, but to be good enough as a finished product, they're probably going to need to be colored/shaded by someone else. (This is a fairly normal workflow for print comics, btw.) Don't feel as though I've slammed your work and said it'll never go in-game - I didn't. Your work is good, and I'll do what I can to color it well (It'll probably have to be me that colors them).
I don't feel like it. I just don't have much time to draw and try to repair this stuff except at weekends, and general chit chat doesn't take things anywhere so I thought I'll keep quiet until I've got something worthy to post.
If you want to be useful - try making sketches for additional undead units; if they're as good as the skeleton warrior you made, they'll be useable in mainline.
I'll see about that then.
Sangel wrote:It'd doubtless take some sustained effort, but the end result would be an even stronger talent for art
Oh, I will put some more effort in the future. I got a nice "I'll show you" -feeling now.
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Sgt. Groovy
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Re: Wolf Rider portrait

Post by Sgt. Groovy »

Yeah, that's what you said in your previous message, and I do know I've got a lot to improve with the shading.
Then it's time to come up with practice where you only concentrate on shading. Basically just put objects on the table where the lighting is directional (one side of the object gets clearly more light than the other) and make quick sketches of them. The idea is not to make good-looking pictures, but to learn to observe how light interacts with surfaces and shapes. Start with simple shapes with light matte surfaces (you can craft some cubes, pyramids, etc. from cardboard) and once you start to get the hang of it, move on to more challenging materials like metal, glass, porcelain. Also try out different techniques, fuzzy shading with charcoal or pencil, striped and stippled shading with pencil or pen, strictly black and white with ink and brush.

A good practice is also to play around with 3-d software, particularily with a raytracer. Even better, if you know any programming, try to write your own raytracer, the mathematics involved are suprisingly simple ("lukion pitkä" is all you need :wink: ) and after that, you can't help looking at the world in a completely different way (I've done this myself and I'd say it opened a third eye in my head :) ).
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AI
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Re: Wolf Rider portrait

Post by AI »

The images on Jetryl's tutorial are 404ing.
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Girgistian
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Re: Wolf Rider portrait

Post by Girgistian »

Back again, studied the shading a little bit. Any better this time?

P.S this is mostly a practice drawing. I know the light should be more orange on the clothes, but it won't be if I'm not going to draw any portraits involving fire, so I payed more attention to the general shading of the character. Not, however, to the shading of the stump he's sitting on or to the stones around the fire, so they can be mostly ignored.
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pauxlo
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Re: Wolf Rider portrait

Post by pauxlo »

Jetryl wrote:[...]the classic "pillowshade", which means that surfaces facing most directly at the camera/audience are bright, and surfaces facing away are dark.
So, "pillowshade" is like doing a photo with a flash directly at the camera location (= light from the same direction as the camera). But in this time they didn't have flash cameras, so there should be other light sources. Did I understand correctly?
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Girgistian
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Re: Wolf Rider portrait

Post by Girgistian »

I believe so. If I myself have understood correctly, the portraits should have some other source of light than one coming from the direction of the viewer, for example sun shining diagonally from the right or left. Some even have multiple light sources.
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thespaceinvader
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Re: Wolf Rider portrait

Post by thespaceinvader »

Indeed - in fact, different light sources and values can add dramatically different feels to a portrait - kitty's Dark Adept is a very good example - the low-angled side light adds a sinister tone, and the cool colour and quite harsh, sharp tone of the light increases it, whereas a warmer lighting colour and a more diffuse light can make an image look softer and friendlier IYSWIM.

Multiple light sources will sometimes feel more natural, since it's very rare to have just one single light source - even outside in the sun, there will be reflected light from surrounding surfaces, and ambient lighting from the light diffusing in the air.

This tutorial in particular offers some very good advice in this area.
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Jetrel
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Re: Wolf Rider portrait

Post by Jetrel »

Here's a slow trickle of the updated tutorial. I need to make a few illustrations for it, but if you don't understand anything I'm saying, please point it out. This is for you.

Shading is an area of art that is at heart, pure math (geometry). You can exaggerate certain parts of it to "stylize" your drawing, but the heart of good shading is always going to be based on the normal way that light behaves. And fortunately, being math, it's something that you can simply follow a "step by step" procedure to slowly work through, if (like most people, including me) you have, when you first try to do it, no good intuitive sense of how to do it.

The key things are to understand the mechanics of reflection, to choose light sources, and to avoid a bunch of common accidents that come from "following the rules," but following them incorrectly because you're oversimplifying some essential part of them without realizing it. This last part is often the key.

Reflection is incredibly simple. Anyone who's played pool/billiards, or bounced a ball off of a wall, can intuitively understand the basic workings of reflection. If you take any surface, you can draw a line perpendicular to that surface (for example, a line at a right angle to a pool table's edge). If you shoot a pool ball right at the point where this line touches, and traced the path it took on the table, you'd notice that the angle it came in at (compared to that line), is exactly the angle it bounces off at. The whole game of pool is based on knowing this; this isn't hard.

(insert picture of pool table)

The not-so-intuitive part is that this works exactly the same way for curved surfaces. And the trick is that curved surfaces - if you zoom in far enough; or, if you're only concerned with a tiny section of them, really aren't curved anymore. If you're zoomed in far enough, or if (like a pool ball), you're only touching a tiny part, that part you're interacting with is pretty much flat. A perfect example is planet earth - we all know from science that the earth is curved; if you look at it on a large scale. But for us humans, the curvature between the place you're standing, and a place 5 meters away - it's so slight that it may as well not be there - it may as well be perfectly flat.

So what you do, when you're confronted with a curved surface, and don't know how something would reflect off it, is you take the really tiny patch you're asking about (or bouncing a pool ball off of), and treat it as flat. If you took two spots right next to it - just a teensy bit away, in either direction, and drew the straight line on the edge between them, you've got your "flat edge" right there.

(insert picture of this)


So ... what does this have to do with light? And shading? Well, light basically works like pool balls - in fact light IS balls - light shining on something is a stream of millions of tiny balls called photons (and they're so small, by the way, that they never bump into each other as they're moving - this means their path isn't any different from a single ball). These photons get created out of thin air at a light source (for example, a light bulb, or a candle, or the sun). They then fly out of that light source in every direction. But the only ones you can see, are the ones that bounce directly out of that light source, off of a surface, and into your eye.

That's right - the vast, vast majority of light in a room/outdoors/wherever never ends up being seen by you. If you've ever walked by a lake at night, and seen a bright reflection of the moon on it, it turns out that that bright spot isn't just in the little spot you're seeing - actually, the whole lake is lit up like that. But only a tiny part of it is actually bouncing into your eyes. So it's absolutely important to know which direction the light bounces in, because even if there's tons of light shining on something, if it's not bouncing into your eye, that thing is going to be totally dark.

So, at the most basic level, all you have to do to decide how bright an spot on your drawing should be, is:
1] Make up a scene in your head.
2] Decide which things in the scene give off light.
3] Pick a spot on the object, that you're going to choose to make light or dark.
4] Imagine shooting a pool ball out from your eye, and bouncing it off of that spot. If it lands in a light source, that spot is bright, if it doesn't land in a light source, that spot is dark.

You may be wondering why I did number 4 in reverse. Doesn't the light come out of the light source, and into your eye? Yes, it does - but because reflection leaves the same angles going either way, you can do it either way. And most of us are used to judging how something would bounce for balls we're shooting away from us, so that's usually a better way to try doing it.



Parts to come-
"What I described above is specular lighting; now to describe diffuse lighting."
"Why things get darker when you get further away from the light - the nailbomb principle"
"Different materials bend the rules, slightly"
"Common pitfalls and mistakes to avoid"
- Pillowshading
- Making the side that faces the light, bright, rather than the spots that it's reflecting off of. (I need a clever name for this)
- Pez Shading
"Choosing good light sources"
"Stylization, and where you can bend some of the rules"
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