[random nonsense] UIR [additional random nonsense] 12/17/04

[Biohaz_Daddy]

X3: Bishop by NightScroller
I don’t buy into the casting. The power signature is alright, but there should be some cast light from it all over him.

Jean G. Summers by MaidenRaine1300
Your sister is getting good at hair. Your drawing is showing improvement as well. Have you looked into practicing with some drawing books, as I have suggested?

Phantom Lady 2 by the uatus
This seems as though you are gaining some confidence. The cape is nice as are the clasps. To me it looks as though you are capable of more complex images.

G.L. Hal Jordan in action by KLA 1
Foreshortened anatomy is difficult to get accurate from one’s minds eye. The use photographic or live reference can be very helpful. That’s all I’ll say about that. The layout is pretty good, but I would have liked the text to be a little larger. The effects are nice as well.

Spitfire #14 Cover Colors by Shaylinn
This is a nice, simple, color job. I think that a few of things handled differently could have made for a cover with impact. The first is that the characters are drawn and inked as backlit, yet your coloring is fairly flat or shaded from the wrong direction. You could have also included a nice cast shadow over Spitfire. The second is you could have taken into account the effect atmosphere has on the color, and sharpness of objects in the distance. To that you could have lightened and blued the trees more as they were more distant. With the mountain you could have done that as well as throwing a haze of distance effect or some clouds over it. Lastly your texture on the trees is done in the direction to appear more like feathers rather than evergreens.

X-Men by Majik1387
Pretty cool and pretty funny too.

Poprobin by k-man
I certainly must take exception to any probin’ of adolescent boys taking place here. I don’t care how po’ it may be. Oh wait… That’s Pop Robin… Nevermind.

Ragin' Cajun... by lightspeed83
The effect is cool, but the frankensteining is off.

Catwoman by Winterhawk
Your leather is coming along. To my way of thinking the highlights should have some texture too though. A couple of odd standouts, her (helmut or cap???) is too tightly wrapped or the top of her head is disproportionately small, and you have the concrete like texture of the roof reflecting light like a shinny surface.

world\'s finest by supermandevilee
The image quality is poor, poor, poor. Try a smaller rez with a higher quality setting next time. It’s okay, but you need to watch your edges.

Deadpool Movie Costume by Wade Wilson
Not too bad… Welcome aboard.

Gotham Penn - Killer Croc & Zsasz by bearbot
Zsasz’s marks should be scars right? The Croc is very cool. My suggestion would have been to vary the color some, maybe use a palette of grays through to your main hue for him.

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I don't know why I did it, I don't know why I enjoyed it, and I don't know why I'll do it again.

[KLA 1]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Biohaz_Daddy:
X3: Foreshortened anatomy is difficult to get accurate from one’s minds eye. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Thank you Biohaz. I did use a live person for the general positions on this one. Still it looks a bit off. Perhaps I should not have added the complication of having one shoulder forward and the other back.

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Seeking the black and white of truth, while treading along in a grayscale world.

[dperceful]

quickie UIR

bishop: on par with your usual stuff. pants are weird looking (lighting)...i like the power effect, should cast on the character.

jean: damn shaun of the dead pop up! you should look at some illustrator work (the application) and get some fresh ideas on use of different colors for shading and lighting.

phantom lady: no art notes.

hal: favorite of the day. i'm a sucker for any hal jordan stuff. i like the lighting on hal...plain awesome. i think the energy trail and glow could use some energy to it, right now....it's just green glow...give it some life. kudos on drawing it and bringing it to life.

spitfire: nice clouds. i like the coloring on the characters as well. i can't tell on the left tree branch if it's missed cleanup or compression. i could only suggest some dramatic lighting due to the trees, rays of light and shadow would be an additional touch of drama.

xmen: i have to commend you for the use of a large variety of characters.

poprobin: enjoying this series.

gambit: well, the charge effect is nice...but it does not light the character at all.

catwoman: you should be happy with this one, it's that "step" that i always talk about. your costuming has always been top notch (the leather is proof of that)....but it's all of the other elements that make this stand out. this manip would not be the same without the cash and cityscape. i like the lighting on the costume as well. great work.

worlds finest: lets hope they publish another face shot of routh. bad resolution, next time work on better base images or smaller images.

deadpool: welcome to the dcg, nice first piece.

killer croc: nice work on croc...looks mean....and crocodile-ish. i just keep looking at this pic, but i can't think of anything to say...i like croc. i think the zsasz guy could use some drippy blood from the cuts. even though i can't think of anything to say, i think saying this is nice work is an understatement...croc is piece of beauty.

dan

[KLA 1]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by dperceful:
<B>hal: favorite of the day. i'm a sucker for any hal jordan stuff. i like the lighting on hal...plain awesome. i think the energy trail and glow could use some energy to it, right now....it's just green glow...give it some life. kudos on drawing it and bringing it to life.
dan</B><HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Thank you Dan. I'll work on that power thing. Perhaps a little noise within the stream?

[dperceful]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by KLA 1:
Thank you Dan. I'll work on that power thing. Perhaps a little noise within the stream?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

i think some noise might help. i also think some gradient green would help. meaning, using some various greens create some bold energy effects. have the lighter colors closer to hal and then radiate out with the darker greens. gl's powers are energy, when i think energy powers i think crackling energy, so i tend to go crazy with it. that's always how i get my power effects....i go WAY overboard...then i tone down. probably not enough sometimes....but i like the results.

good work, keep it up....love the hand drawn stuff.

[Biohaz_Daddy]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by KLA 1:
<B> Thank you Biohaz. I did use a live person for the general positions on this one. Still it looks a bit off. Perhaps I should not have added the complication of having one shoulder forward and the other back.

</B><HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

No thanks required, and yes of course you should always add the every bit of complication you can think of. You do good work and are always pushing yourself, that's why I try to give you a little extra in my critiques.

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I don't know why I did it, I don't know why I enjoyed it, and I don't know why I'll do it again.

[B]

X3: Bishop by NightScroller
Not a huge fan of the casting, but that's me. The pants are kind of blurry, though the belt is nice. Cool X. The tattoo's really blurry and ill-defined, rather smudgy and quite fake. It doesn't look like part of the skin. It needs some sharpening and to match the lighting of the surrounding skin. The power effect's pretty cool, though it kinda lacks oomph. It could certainly afford to have more of a glow to it. And as Dan and Biohaz point out, it needs to show on the character.

Jean G. Summers by MaidenRaine1300
As usual, good work given the software you have to work with. The costuming looks quite a bit better than some of your other work, especially the blues. You're heading towards the animated, cartoony look, which is good considering your software's limitations. I'll second Dan's suggestion to go check out some Illustrator work, though I'd never have thought to suggest that myself. It should give you some good ideas as to doing shading with discrete colours. And your sister did a good job on the hair, it looks great.

G.l. Hal Jordan In Action by KLA 1
There's definitely something weird about that foreshortened pose, but I'll be damned if I know what. It just looks weird. Nice drawing otherwise, nice background, nice effects, nice lighting on the text and on the character. The ring looks kind of flat. And I agree with Dan that the glow could be improved. This works but, yeah, it could be improved.

Spitfire #14 Cover Colors by Shaylinn
Nice work, Shay. I can't really think of any major problems, honestly. Nice colours, nice shading throughout. I'd make some suggestions as to how to improve the piece, but I can't really think of anything to add to what Dan and Biohaz have said.

X-men by Majik1387
Now that is a whole lot of characters... fun piece.

Poprobin by k-man
Good piece, as always. A fun series. I've mentioned that I love the way you frame these pics, right?

Ragin' Cajun... by lightspeed83
Nice power effect but yeah, it should show on the character more. And there's something weird about the positioning and/or size of the head. It looks off.

Catwoman by Winterhawk
Great work, obviously. Wonderful background -- there's that integration between character, concept and background that you've talked about in relation to one of my pics. Good job. And I love the money, that's such a great but of detail. Nice texture for her costume, though I must admit it doesn't quite look like leather to me... leather would IMO have slightly sharper and brighter highlights. And speaking of the highlights, some of them are a bit overdone... the brightest ones, on the left arm and on the thigh, they're very uniform and glaring and, as Biohaz mentioned, they lack texture. It still looks great, though. Nice texture on the roof as well, lest I forget. There's not much I can add to the various criticisms the others have made, both here and at heromorph. Well, okay, I'll repeat that the head looks weird. Some nitpicks about the goggles: the lenses (ie, the highlights on them) should probably curve (or at least, I've never seen any eyewear with flat lenses); second, the frame... If that shading's supposed to be a pattern on the goggles, cool, but if it's supposed to be a metal effect, it's rather random... too much so to match the other lighting on the character. I think it'd look a bit better if you only had highlights matching the shape of the frame rather than also having that random up and down shading. It just doesn't quite work for me. Like I said, though, minor nitpicks. This is a great piece, certainly your best work to date. And it has indeed taken your art to the next level. Oh, and: favourite pic of the day.

World\'s Finest by supermandevilee
It's okay, decent cut-n-paste, but the picture quality is completely shot, plus Supes is floating. Some ugly edges as well.

Deadpool Movie Costume by Wade Wilson
Welcome to the DCG. Good debut, nice texture on the suit. More detailed art notes would be appreciated, mind you.

Gotham Penn - Killer Croc & Zsasz by bearbot
Very nice, this is a great series so far. Croc looks awesome... just awesome. I cringe at the mere thought of the amount of work that must have gone into those scales... Great work. It's just a bit bright, mind you... I get the feeling the shadows on him should be a bit darker. Zsasz is cool as well, nice glasses, but some of those cuts at least should be scars. They all look like raw (but not bleeding, oddly) cuts. Scars are just raised sections of skin... they aren't so red unless they're fresh, and I don't see that all of his scars would be recent. Just my opinion. I think Dan did a tutorial on scars, maybe you could check it out. Again though, great work overall. I look forward to seeing more of this series.

[Winterhawk]

Thanks everyone.
I don't have time for a UIR but a few people have asked me about the "leather technique" I have been using on this picture and the black canary one.

I do my normal costuming and seem work first. I merge all of the layers into one layer. I duplicate this layer and run the noise filter on it, for the catwoman picture I had it set at about 3.5. I then used a large fuzzy brush to erase the sections of the noise layer near area's I thought would be pulled tight (this was based on my old leather jacket that doesn't fit any more, the areas that are pulled tight didn't have a visible texture on them). I then set the noise layer to 85% opacity. I then duplicated the noise layer and ran the craquelure filter on it, I played around with the setting quite a bit but I think I had them set at about 15,6, & 9. I then turn the opacity to this third layer down to about 13%. I again went back to the original costume layer and duplicated it again and ran the noise filter on it with the setting of about 2 and set the opacity to around 8%.
That’s about it.
Thanks again for the critiques.

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I dont suffer from insanity, I enjoy it.