- Joined
- Jul 28, 2004
- Messages
- 1,340
bleh
Introduction
Hey, today im bringing you a tutorial that i typed and illustrated. My goal is of course to help people if possible, since i guess i master the basics well enough. My advices are mainly for drawing in photoshop/GIMP but they can be used on a sheet of paper or in skinning, since they're all in the same techtree.
The BIG Tip
My best advice would be that you need to draw a lot, it would even more if you would rent yourself detailed book explaining the muscles and all the anatomy you wonder about. You could also draw your hand, it only takes two minutes and helps you, try to draw your feets and hands in multiple poses, then in classroom you can do a 6-second drawing of someone's nose, i do that a lot. drawing from nature is a great way to learn, but since copying isn't enough, you gotta know what you draw. if you're told to draw the leg muscles from an anatomy book you should try to learn about each individual muscle, their shape and functions. That can easily be learned if you rent a anatomy book, i've borrowed some and they're rather useful, you get better if you draw-learn from real attributes rather if you draw from GUESSING. you can't see the things you don't know, that's simple.
The art of having a good color palette
Yes, that's a tricky one. Having a red and black vampire is dull, you can use shades of yellow to red when you color a face, not only tan and darker colors of it. On a human face, you can easily spot the colors: red green and blue. tan is only a global color. the grunt's global color is green, but he have yellow/brown too, he's not a fricken apple.
Shading
Shading is hard, but it's the most important thing to master if you're making a skin/icon/art, otherwisely you suck, honestly. from age 3 to 60 your shading capacities will develop, but there is a minimum to master.
Shading is what makes your drawing realistic or not. On many skins i've noticed the use of CONTOURS, where a shape/selection is surrounded by a black border, that's highly against the laws of skinning, and it makes the shading exctruatingly bad in that area. You might say "Oh, this part of the skin isn't really put in evidence, i will put a contour around it" but that's beceause your shading isn't good, try to make it better before doing such a weak move.
There is shading and lightning. Where shading is the lack of light, and lightning the invasion of light. But during the night, in a urban city, you have three kinds of shading on your face: the moon's, the city's and the lack of light you might have.
When you're trying to shading, focus your mind on where the main light sources ( using only one is recommended ), and then try to use your logic to create highlights and shadows.
As an exercise, open up a 600x600 grey image with nothing on it, and do lines of white and black ONLY wich you can shade/erase of course, you can go see my lastest work here to get an idea of what kind of results you can get : Go in the art section and type my name.
Cnping n Recoloring n Filters..
Im highly against the uses of cnping, recoloring and the use of filters. it simplys interfere your learning, you cant get better at skinning if you use something else than freeHANDing, when you do something else than freehanding, you're virtually asking someone else to do the work for you, removing you the efforts and experience you might've learnt from doing it yourself. Im against it, wich means i have a reason to not use it, it's not like hate or racism, it's just a shame self-proclaimed skinners cnps, recolors or even worse, use filters.
Pre-sketching & Sketching..
Spooky words no? it's more useful with drawings rather than skinning, beceause at skinning you can't really draw persons, it's all distorted and crap. In photoshop/GIMP or on a sheet, its very important to presketch, and get the proportions right. Also you gotta get the claviculas, shoulders, knees, legs, arms, hands heads already placed on the sheet before you start drawing. You simply CAN'T begin drawing a nose, then an arm and try to complete the character. If on a sheet you draw a nose or another body part, without using the commonly used non-manga head structure method, you cant get it right, even profesionnals would get flaws, if not minor flaws.
Introduction
Hey, today im bringing you a tutorial that i typed and illustrated. My goal is of course to help people if possible, since i guess i master the basics well enough. My advices are mainly for drawing in photoshop/GIMP but they can be used on a sheet of paper or in skinning, since they're all in the same techtree.
The BIG Tip
My best advice would be that you need to draw a lot, it would even more if you would rent yourself detailed book explaining the muscles and all the anatomy you wonder about. You could also draw your hand, it only takes two minutes and helps you, try to draw your feets and hands in multiple poses, then in classroom you can do a 6-second drawing of someone's nose, i do that a lot. drawing from nature is a great way to learn, but since copying isn't enough, you gotta know what you draw. if you're told to draw the leg muscles from an anatomy book you should try to learn about each individual muscle, their shape and functions. That can easily be learned if you rent a anatomy book, i've borrowed some and they're rather useful, you get better if you draw-learn from real attributes rather if you draw from GUESSING. you can't see the things you don't know, that's simple.
The art of having a good color palette
Yes, that's a tricky one. Having a red and black vampire is dull, you can use shades of yellow to red when you color a face, not only tan and darker colors of it. On a human face, you can easily spot the colors: red green and blue. tan is only a global color. the grunt's global color is green, but he have yellow/brown too, he's not a fricken apple.
Shading
Shading is hard, but it's the most important thing to master if you're making a skin/icon/art, otherwisely you suck, honestly. from age 3 to 60 your shading capacities will develop, but there is a minimum to master.
Shading is what makes your drawing realistic or not. On many skins i've noticed the use of CONTOURS, where a shape/selection is surrounded by a black border, that's highly against the laws of skinning, and it makes the shading exctruatingly bad in that area. You might say "Oh, this part of the skin isn't really put in evidence, i will put a contour around it" but that's beceause your shading isn't good, try to make it better before doing such a weak move.
There is shading and lightning. Where shading is the lack of light, and lightning the invasion of light. But during the night, in a urban city, you have three kinds of shading on your face: the moon's, the city's and the lack of light you might have.
When you're trying to shading, focus your mind on where the main light sources ( using only one is recommended ), and then try to use your logic to create highlights and shadows.
As an exercise, open up a 600x600 grey image with nothing on it, and do lines of white and black ONLY wich you can shade/erase of course, you can go see my lastest work here to get an idea of what kind of results you can get : Go in the art section and type my name.
Cnping n Recoloring n Filters..
Im highly against the uses of cnping, recoloring and the use of filters. it simplys interfere your learning, you cant get better at skinning if you use something else than freeHANDing, when you do something else than freehanding, you're virtually asking someone else to do the work for you, removing you the efforts and experience you might've learnt from doing it yourself. Im against it, wich means i have a reason to not use it, it's not like hate or racism, it's just a shame self-proclaimed skinners cnps, recolors or even worse, use filters.
Pre-sketching & Sketching..
Spooky words no? it's more useful with drawings rather than skinning, beceause at skinning you can't really draw persons, it's all distorted and crap. In photoshop/GIMP or on a sheet, its very important to presketch, and get the proportions right. Also you gotta get the claviculas, shoulders, knees, legs, arms, hands heads already placed on the sheet before you start drawing. You simply CAN'T begin drawing a nose, then an arm and try to complete the character. If on a sheet you draw a nose or another body part, without using the commonly used non-manga head structure method, you cant get it right, even profesionnals would get flaws, if not minor flaws.
