[Ghandaiah]

Hullo.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you my very first digital image.





He's of an alien race I've created called the Ocenda, which appear in a novel I'm actually writing at the moment.

As far as image quality goes, I thought it turned out pretty well for my first ever digital image. Nothing that ranks up with the stuff that's regularly posted on this forum, of course, but still...

Crits and comments are welcome, of course.

[Kamal]

Pretty good for your first digital image. Cool alien design and I'm sure it has a cool story behind it.

My suggestion would be:

Work on lighting, composition and anatomy. Right now all the convexities on his body seem to have their own light source. Try to look at the figure as one whole being affected by one light or two, but never more than three unless you're going with a blown out effect. For anatomy I always use an anatomy book to use as reference. There's tons of anatomy for artists books out there.

But overall, congratulations on completing your first digital image. It will only be uphill from here on.



Kamal

[Muzman]

I spy Burn & Dodge
You'll be wanting wean yourself off that at some stage. I understand perfectly the attraction to them; you can shift an area up or down in overall tone without having to redraw the individual contrasts of the details (if that makes any sense). But they play havok with colour and they're really difficult to control finely, leaving smudges everywhere you can't correct because you can't reproduce their gradient effect easily with other tools (ie; paint over it with a paintbrush and you get a really obvious flat coloured area. You've probably experienced this yourself).
That said I think it's pretty obvious you can sketch ok (based on this pic anyway), so I'd say progress will be nothing like 'uphill'. Well, ok, maybe it will be, but not too steep.
Good luck

[Ghandaiah]

Thanks for the pointers. Can't get enough of those things.

About the burn and dodge thing - I basically followed the tutorial on Sijun.com... Otherwise, I would've had no idea where to start. But as far as it goes, I think it may have something to do with style, as well. I mean, yeah, burning and dodging has its share of problems, but I know of experienced people who still use it, and produce amazing artwork with it. Not that I'm defending burn and dodge - I just have yet to discover other methods of painting, anyway, and still have to find one that I'm most comfortable with.

But thanks again for the tips. I know I have a lot of practice ahead of me before I can even think about becoming a l337 4r7i57 d00d.

[Cicinimo]

Yeah, I started out using the dodge and burn tool like sijun also. But pretty soon I realized it was a bad habit. Now I only use it on occassion, and instead I pic my own colors (but not with swatches; focus on the saturation and values you choose) and paint with the normal paintbrush tool. Great design, btw.


Cicinimo

[lalPOOO]

great pic, I like the style..

another thing, whats the damn difference between the paintbrush and the airbrush in photoshop, it's driving me insane...
I'd rather not try it out, I'd ratehr just be told, sorry if i sound rude, but it'd be really annoying if all the pros were trying to screw with the new people by saying, "use the paintbrush!"

btw sorry for posting off topic, but I gotta know

[Dr.Squirley]

paintbrush has hard edges
airbrush has soft edges

[Muzman]

That's true, Paintbrush is generally harder. You can get soft edges from a paintbrush though, if you really want to.
The other main difference is in the way it puts down colour. The airbrush always builds up to 100 percent opacity, the stylus pressure/opacity setting dictating the speed that it gets there. Even if you use a very light touch or set the tool opacity to 1%; hold it on a spot long enough and you will put down a blob of solid colour ('cause it's emulating a squirting hose thingy, yasee).
The paintbrush, by contrast, is more static; whatever the pressure of the stroke and/or opacity setting dictates, that's what you get. Dab it lightly and hold it on the spot and it wont add to that light spot of colour until you move it, like the real thing (drips notwithstanding). A lot of control per stroke.
Make sense?