Wednesday, March 29, 2006

  Hey everybody. How are you all today?

I was up 'till 4 AM last night.
@_@ Yes, you read right; 4 AM.

"Why?", you must be asking?
Well, you see, I was drawing.
For most of the night, I was struggling to get something productive down on paper.
But at about midnight, an idea I had thought-up recently came to me. I started work on it, and as it progressed, I liked it better and better.

Taking into account the things you all have critiqued me on in my most recent work, my goal was improvement.
Accordingly, I took some risks as I went along, using techniques that were new to me and that I was unsure about as far as weather they would work or not.
I tried something new in several different areas, and guess what:
It turned out great. =D

I guess that's a lesson about art I need to learn:
"You won't grow & improve unless you try out techniques that run the risk of failing".

I'm not going to tell you what the picture's of yet, but just know it's gonna' be an awesome pic pertaining to "Ghost Hunter" (as well as a little of me being an ego-maniac =3 ).
Though, please keep in mind that I've only started this pic. Due to the amount of detail required for its composition, I only have about 30%, maybe 40% of the line-art done.
But, it's coming along swimmingly so far, so I'll have it done pretty soon.

It probably didn't hurt the quality of this pic that I recently took to sorting my picture folder to get my reference pieces organized.
You see, up until now, whenever I was browsing artwork and I see a piece that would make a good reference to help me draw (i.e., pictures of hands in complex but common positions, people in poses or clothing I need help drawing, etc.), I'd just save it to my computer and come back to it later.
The problem was that I've saved a butt-load of reference art, so when I needed a piece showing a specific pose, object or facial-expression, I'd have no idea where it was. @_@
Naturally, that had to stop.

So, over Spring Break so far I've been slowly organizing my reference work.
Now when I need a picture of a certain pose or wardrobe, I'll actually know where it is! :D
Isn't that great?

I have 2 main folders going right now: Male and Female reference.
Female is obviously for when I'm drawing Megan and Andrea, meaning it's mostly full of women in military garb, action poses and combat positions, as well as girls with good facial-expressions, proportions, and really pretty, fluttery hair. (*is a total sucker for girls with pretty hair*)
And as logic would assume, Male reference is for Josh and Logan, meaning it's mostly full of cocky dudes holding high-caliber weapons (that's Josh, by the way), as well as guys in either priesthood garb or suit & tie (that's for Logan).
I also have an extra folder for "Ghost Reference", meaning it's where I keep all my pictures of the spooks, ghouls & creepy-crawlies that can help me next time I'm drawing a ghost. >=D

Now that I've bored you to death, let me return to the topic of yesterday's post: My trial-version of Photoshop.
As I said, I've been screwing with Photoshop since Friday.
Would you like to see what my experimenting has produced? =3
Check it out:


I'm sure you all remember this pic I did for Akane the Fox a little over a year ago, right?
If you do, you'd know the original was black & white.
And yet, this one here is in color.
=O How?
Photoshop!!!

Check out my first try using Photoshop to enhance a pic, rather then color a B&W one:


How much spiffier does this one look then the original!?
Keep in mind I'm not yet done enhancing this little cockpit junkie, but look how much better the color of his hair and eyes are!
"Live to fly, fly to live", buddy! ^o^

This one here is my favorite....
I'm sure you all remember Gulliver Gosslaves; the chap who had the crap beaten out of him by our lovely sadistic serial-killer:


*GASP!* A ghost NOT in B&W?
That's right! How do you like his color-scheme?
I know some of you may think the blue over-tones I used for his body are a little weird, but that's how I imagined him looking in my head!
(I also know I used the "Soften" tool a bit too much here, but hey, I'm still practicing.)

What I want to do now is make it look like his eyes are glowing.
I've already tried selecting his eye-area and trying to add the "Neon Glow" effect, but that doesn't seem to work.
Any suggestions on how to get his charming red eyes to glow would be greatly appreciated from any of you experienced Photoshop'ers.

Allrightie everyone, I'm off to visit your sites!
I'll see you all a bit later tonight!

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