[Xcal]

I'm working on this gal just for fun and practice. You standard fantasy sword-slingin female-type. Gimme some feedback?



This is a finished one... smaller rez



By the way, I'm working at 4000ish resolution for coloring, and my computer is slow as heck! Any suggestions on optimizing my config for more speed with PS? I'm running dual celeron 366, 128RAM, 13Gig HD, GeForce 32MB card. No scratch disk yet. Wondering how much faster things will get if I get a dedicated scratch disk?

Thanks.

[This message has been edited by Xcal (edited November 30, 2000).]

[faustgfx]

or you COULD make, say, 1000x1000 selection, save it, copy the area into a new image, close the big one, work the 1000x1000 area, paste it back to the selection you saved in the initial image.

duh.



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sky high with a heartache of stone you never see me 'cos i'm always alone

[email protected] /
icq#35983387

[Xcal]

i COULD do that, but if there's a way to solve the problem without having to do that, why would I? When you consider the amount of different layers that pile up, I don't think I want to worry about seams and shit, nor do I want to create a new document every friggin time I want to work on a section...

durr.

----
Xcal http://artofsin.com

[kanabis]

faster cpu .....
more ram ....

nuff said

[Chapel]

My suggestion on coloring is to color it on the size that you are going to:
a. print it
or
b. display it

If you color it at a huge resolution half of the little details will get taken out.

[kimzoll]

Great drawings, nice colouring on the dwarf.
I do this myself all the time and seen it on a couple of drawings on this forum also, if you look at the hands of the girl the right one is bigger than the left one and the right one is farther away from us.
thats the on crit I have, they are great otherwise
Kim

[Rinaldo]

Wow that's really nicely done. I like it a lot.


Is there any reason why you're using that sort of res. I wouldn't say it's needed unless you're going to print it big.

[egerie]

wow !
Great line work. The first tiny thing that comes to my mind are the eyes. Is she looking in direction of the top left corner or at the viewer ?
The wind is strong enough to pick up her cloack but doesn'T seem to effect lighter things like her hair that much. -Yes, logical crap but you make what you want of it
Be carefull about the head size proportion too.

Can't wait to see the colored version !
-ege

[Jaymo]

That linework is gorgeous! It may be a little stereotype, but who cares? Only her right foot appears slightly odd to me and the scabbard is too curved for an asian blade IMHO. That dwarf is cool, too. Beautiful work, looking forward to see her in full color.

[Dives]

Damn xcal your work keeps getting better and better. I love them both. Especially the dwarf. Post some more maybe that alent of yours is contagious.

[Joachim]

xcal, great pose ! Very nice drawing indeed, me thinks I really like the way the legs and feets are drawn. Ver well placed on ground. Just watched your page, you have improved a lot, esp. with this character! Personally I can't see anything you should improve on this one. so, well done

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Joachim's Place

[shaithis]

The pose is awesome. Nice, clean linework, too. My only issue would be the hilt of the sword, which I agree looks too curved, and I also think is a bit too thin.

Just my two cents. Overall, this is a kickass piece. I hope to see some colored versions.

-shai

[Francis]

Very nice! I really like the b&w sketch. The only iffy thing for me is her left hand - it's a little bit ambiguous as to which side the thumb is on. Obviously it's on the thumb end, but I think maybe the hilt guard is too close to the hand (or vice versa), which seems to not leave enough room for the thumb. Minor detail, otherwise no complaints. It's a nice piece.

Dwarf guy is cool, too - I'd like to see a bigger version. With a guy that small and stocky, it's probably difficult to maintain the right proportions, but it looks good to me. His right shoulder probably could move outward a little bit - seems a little tight into the body/neck.

Keep up the good work.

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Francis Tsai
TeamGT Studios

[A]

Xcal, awesome line art. I like the pose of the female character a lot. Keep on it.

As for speed, three things:
1) do you REALLY need such high res??? If you
work lower res, you'll be happier IMO. Check the tutorial at www.goodbrush.com to see how you can work at higher res on some bits before pasting them back in at lower res. Many art is done at 300 dpi. Do you really want to print your images out 13x13 inches?
2) More RAM. This helps more than anything.
3) Overclock the bejeebies out of those Celerons. "Born to be Overclocked" or something is what I say...

Thats my 2 cents worth, now get back to it and show us some more of this stuff!

[Cos]

hey xcal these are great man! You've improved alot from your older stuff. One thing that might look a lil iffy is the babes right arm is maybe a bit long to where her elbow reaches, might be better to bring it in slightly more.. Keep up the good work!

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-Cos Koniotis-

http://www.3dpalette.org/~coskoniotis

[Xcal]

Tanx for all the feedback. You are right, I really don't have a great reason why I'm working in 4000+ rez. I think it might be some futile hope that maybe I might actually print it out that big one day... wouldn't it be nice if we could all easily make such large prints of our work.. hehe.

As for responses to your crits, thanks. YOu seem to be able to pick up the little details I don't (simply because I'm lazy).

The dwarf's linework was done with a pen. I didn't like how it came out (too bold and high contrast). The girl's linework is 2b pencil, cleaned up in Photoshop. I used the cool tutorial from www.polykarbon.com. Using "curves" came in extra handy.

SHORTCUT FOR FILLING LINEART WITH FLATS

For anyone who's interested, I found a cool shortcut to putting in "Flat colors" to linework (if I'm the last to figure this out, shame on me :P )--

1. After lineart is scanned in, converted to RGB and cleaned up, Go into channels and make a copy of the "Blue" channel (alpha 1). This basically becomes a mask that "selects" everything on your picture except the lines.

2. Go back to layers, create a new layer and label it "Flat guide". On that layer, go to "load selection", and load "Alpha 1", to select everything on your image except the lineart.

3. Fill this with black. You should now have a stencil-like version of your image, composed of chunks of black separated into your image by where your lines should be.

4. Using "magic wand" with "contiguous", "tolerance = 45 ", and "use all layers".

5. You should be now able to go about and use the magic wand to select individual patches of black from the flat-guide to easily fill(with "contiguous" on) with your flat color of choice. Using the magic wand (while holding "shift" to add), this can get pretty speedy.

6. After your flat colors are filled in, you can invert the "flat-guide" selection (alpha1), and fill in the selection with black to create a layer with just line art (credit to Polykarbon.com)

7. Now you can go back to your "flats layer" and quickly clean up the edges of the flat colors.

Just thought I'd share that, hehe.