[Matt Elder]

G'day everyone. After the last 'ordinary' turtles colouring effort, here is my second serious crack at colouring. I've 'moved' sideways to the 'LIQUID!' style of colouring and sort of developed my own. It is still experimental so I would be interested in comments. The artworks is Sam Liu http://www.itch-studios.f2s.com/ Cheers.



[ October 30, 2001: Message edited by: Matt Elder ]

[Kaiju]

Just some things to think about when you work on your next piece and some comments about this one.

1) Ease off on the saturated colors. Everything is too vivid and it makes it difficult for the eye to look at.

2) More contrast between the highlights and shadows.

3) Focus on one or two lightsources to guide your rendering. This picture has a strong lightsource shining directly up towards the characters and a secondary from behind them. Lighting also helps seperate the figures.

4) Keep your backgrounds simple. They should compliment the characters and not distract from them. One color would be more effective than blue and purple. I personally avoid using filters like cloud render or lens flare also.

5) Make sure you understand the forms and how lighting should effect them. Don't just put highlights anywhere.

Keep practicing!!

[Matt Elder]

Thanks for your comments Kaiju - greatly appreciated!! (Love the website BTW and I believe I've commented on your work before).

As a 2nd attempt I'm still learning heaps and your post will help immensely. If I may, a couple of questions:

1) Any tips for the avoiding over-saturation? When I've tried not to do this, the image seems 'flat' and lacking.

2) when you say more contrast between the highlights and shadows, is that because the shadows don't really 'exist' or the 'cuts' aren't as well defined as they could be.

3) Just as a bit of a guide, how long does it take you to colour a page?

Thanks heaps again for your comments.

[Merekat]

Hi Matt! Long time no talk. ;}

quote:

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Originally posted by Matt Elder:
1) Any tips for the avoiding over-saturation? When I've tried not to do this, the image seems 'flat' and lacking.

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One of the biggest things I can suggest at this point is just attack your picture with your Saturation window whe you're having issues. If you hit control-u, that's a shortcut. From there you can do just about anything. You can adjust the main colors (choose blue and tweak the hues and saturation that way, choose yellows for adjusting yellows and such) there. It might be easier to get everything settled at the end of the painting rather than preventative work during it. I find most of my final tweaks are overall levels, saturation and color changes.

quote

Quote:

2) when you say more contrast between the highlights and shadows, is that because the shadows don't really 'exist' or the 'cuts' aren't as well defined as they could be.

I think on of the main troubles here is that you have no real shading. Take cable's blue part of his uniform for example. The blue parts/shading of his chest is the exact same as his legs. The same goes for the yellow parts. You have no lighting showing the dark of the sky, or the reflection/illumination of the lightning on the edges of the figures.

Storm and Cable both are illuminated the same as if they were in broad daylight, not in a stormy sky.

Oh, and why keep the lightning strokes solidly outlined? Could you fuzzy up the edge? Would look more realistic.

Hope those notes help a lot. If you have further questions, I might have time to grab your pic and tweak with it quickly. Let me know.

Either way, this is pretty schnazzy! Keep up the great work.

[Rohan]

wow, ur skills are definately improving, though i still think the colours are a little flat and too saturated atm. Keep it up matt