Lousy_Day

Statesman VS Lord Recluse
Alternative view

Some WIPs to cry about what I had to go thorugh to get this done:
Initial sketch in Painter
The pattern I posted last week
After two days of cutting
Cutting finished
Following morning, after staying up all night

*Update*
Power punch!
I've got my eyes on you

Wow, great posees! I like the subtle twists and turns in the torsos in the first three.

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Oooo, looks like stained glass

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my thoughts exactly, that's be cool to see it colored as if it was stained glass.

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I have done it already when coming up with the pattern. It is going to be an actual stained glass piece.

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This soooo needs to be colored .... It could even be a class project in May after the battle ... I'm sure eveyone could color this and it could be fun to see what people come up with.

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I have a specific color scheme in mind, but I would love to see everyone else's take on it, too.

Well, I am going to feed myself, then I will be on my way to the stained glass store to buy and cut glass. It will probably take all day today and tomorrow.

Great entries so far guys.

I have my monitor repaired, but I am not going digital this month. So I scrapped the tic-tac-toe idea, and decided to take a more abstract and philosophical approach.

Statesman VS Lord Recluse WIP

What I have now is the finished pattern. It is kinda hard to see the exact forms and meaning without color, but I thought it would be a good idea to build anticipation without giving away too much.

I should have it finished by early next week. Good luck to everyone who hasn't submitted a piece yet.

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I also think there's something very valuable to be learned from this - for any artist who might be considering doing commissions themselves.

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Yeah, I learned to be aware of my own limits when this happened last time. This is a really sad situation, and I feel bad for everyone involved. MMOArt was a great inspiration to me when I was just starting to discover digital art, and to see it come to this, again.... Looks like rebooting didn't help, so I gues we are in for an operating system reinstallation. Here's hoping they will switch to a stable and more efficient operating system that will make things right.

Wow, that's total awesomeness!

Great job! Looks good.

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I'm going to do Brawler vs. Wretch in a jello wrestling competition.

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Guess I will get my idea out as well, since I am not sure if I will have my monitor fixed in time. I actually might have to draw traditionally this month. I am going to go for Statesman and Lord Recluse playing a serious match of Tic-Tac-Toe.

In the brush settings window, click on 'Shape Dynamics' and set size to pen pressure.

Wacom Intuos4 is out, and when you buy one, you can choose to download two of the following(why not all 3? ):

Adobe Photoshop® Elements 7 Windows or Adobe Photoshop® Elements 6 for Macintosh

Autodesk SketchBook Express® 2010

Corel Painter™ Sketch Pad

Intuos4 is expensive, but at least you can get big discounts on Photoshop CS4 and Painter 11 if you pick Photoshop Elements and Painter Sketch Pad.

I guess you can add Autodesk Sketchbook Pro to the list of painting programs you should try out. They have a free trial as is the case with the other programs.

I really want to try out the new features in Intuos4, but I guess I will stick with my Intuos3 6x11 for now, because I really like the size. A medium Intuos4 looks a bit too small and a large Intuos4 may be a little too big for me. Besides, I want to save for Zbrush...sigh, you can never keep up with all the hardware and the software they keep coming out with.

That is really nice!

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Sorry for not making it this month My computer died (arrg, still working on getting it fixed).

Anyhow, I votes for Toxic_Shia (i love those avatar things!)

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Sorry to hear that. I really do feel your pain, because my relatively new monitor that has been working perfectly suddenly died tonight. I am stuck with my ancient five-year-old laptop till I get it fixed.

Those are nice, but I think Doctor Brain used neural scrambler on Psi-Ant and took over his link.

I think it is a great idea for artists who do not play CoH.

It took me forever to make up my mind, but my vote goes to Projectionist.

Those are too cute!!! Love the backgrounds.

I haven't made tutorials before, but making one will probably be a good practice for me as well...so I will try to put something together in the future if I can figure out how to present it clearly. No promise when, though.

Thanks for the kind words you all! I really do appreciate your feedback, and it is what keeps me going.

I may have had a shady deal with Vivace , and here is a sketch of her. I actually did it to explain what I said in Derek's thread about starting a drawing in Alchemy and painting on top of it using another software, which in this case was Painter X.

Hey, when I saw that, I immediately thought of Alchemy. It is a free drawing program, and you can do things like that in no time, and get very spontaneous and interesting results. Here is what I did in Alchemy while looking at your piece, and it took like 15 seconds. You can do a quick silhouette drawing in Alchemy, export as jpg to another painting program and add/remove/refine details. Definitely worth checking out.

Are you looking for a general painting program? If so, there's a few I've tried. If you are looking for something similar to Photoshop, then I recommend GIMP.

When I paint in GIMP, I use pretty much the same method I use in Photoshop. I get most of the job done with hard round and soft round brushes, and use textured/custom brushes to add some flavor. GIMP doesn't utilize tilt and rotation of your tablet pen, but you can hardly fault it as it is a free software.

Here are some recent paintings I did in GIMP.
GIMP exercise 1
GIMP exercise 2
And one I did in Photoshop a while ago for comparison.
Photoshop exercise

As you can see, these are pretty similar. If I didn't say which program I used, you'd think these were painted with the same program.

If you are looking to simulate traditional media, Painter is the most obvious choice, but since you are not asking about it, ArtRage is another one. I haven't tried ArtRage, but I've heard good things about it. There is a free version, and the full version is only $25.

Corel Sketch Pad is a new program they just released. I have tried out the 30-day trial. I absolutely love the pencil brush in Sketch Pad, much more so than the pencil brushes in Painter X. You can get thicker lines by tilting your pen, and it feels very natural. Sadly, I can't recomment purchasing Sketch Pad as it is too expensive (around $120 I think) for what it does. I just wish I could use the same pencil brush in Painter X.
Sketch Pad Pencil brush example
Sketch Pad Chalk brush example

Now, if you want to try something totally wild and get your creative juice flowing, get Alchemy! It is another free program. I just got it a couple of days ago myself, and it is amazing. It is hard to describe how it works...you basically play around with lines and shapes. Here is my first Alchemy experiment worth showing.

I have no idea which would be best suited for anime art, but I hope this helps you find what you are looking for!

Posted this in the March Fanart Battle thread, but here is Dark Ether finished.

Here is my entry. It is Dark Ether in Vanguard outfit. I originally had a very elaborate idea for the background, where a Crey experiment went wrong and turned him into a zombie. I just didn't have enough time, so I had to settle for a simple background. I tried to add some blood, but I couldn't figure out how to make it look realistic in this lighting....so this is Dark Ether on his way to find his first victim!

Here's a WIP for my March fanart battle entry featuring Dark Ether in his Vanguard outfit.

Awesome job, Projectionist!

Looking great!