Graphics/Design stuff Q&A

Since 7600 Days

Musculature wise I'm bordering on photo real with this, but I usually stylise the faces. It'll fit in with the previous one I posted, with the fancy hair.

It's extra difficult because this woman is supposed to be kinda buff, more than the typical "still pretty erotic!" amount, but stopping short of looking like a dude with tits. So it's a pretty tough line to walk, and it needs to look right, so.

I feel fairly confident at this point, but I might post some WIP stuff soon and you guys can give me some pointers if something looks weird.

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http://www.twitter.com/simonlundmark - Follow me on twitter

Since 6902 Days

Well i'll assume taht you know this as well, but none the less and just in case; a great way of spotting wonky bits of your own drawings is to flip them horizontally every now and then. At least when working digitally, which i assume is the case.

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"I still don't know if snakes make good pets, but at least they've got your f****g back."

Since 7577 Days

And if you're not working digitally, you can always just turn them upside down :)

Hell, even I know that, and I'm probably the worst illustrator out of our little group of artists here.

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Since 7600 Days

Turning it upside down helps a bit, but the best thing you can do if you're drawing on paper is to literally have a mirror available.

The wonkyness that you can spot by doing so often a slight skewing of the motif. If you don't know your anatomy you're fairly effed no matter which way you flip it. :)

All I can say right now is I wish I had lady bits, because this woman looks like I've had Lou Ferrigno as reference.

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Since 7577 Days

Posted by SimonM7

All I can say right now is I wish I had lady bits

I wish I had lady bits to model for me, but I am fine with my man parts.

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Since 7600 Days

Haha, well yes it would be an adequate substitute if I had someone with lady bits to pose for me. I was just trying to use Megido's earlier advice of using myself as reference, and combine it with my lady bit reference needs.

I'm still wrestling my photoshop brushes here I have to say.

I feel like there used to be a way to make truly soft brushes once. I mean with like.. a center, and then really "fussy" around that center. Now whatever I do and whichever hardness I pick, it's like an entire area that's getting equal "pressure" and then some slight fussyness around the edges. It gives me these defined edges when I paint - which can be a stylistic choice - but I want more airbrush like qualities when I do these very CG-esque and detailed things.

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Since 7600 Days

OooooOOOOoooooh.

"Flow" :D

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Frozpot

Since 7335 Days

LOL...

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Oooh, Profound, isn't it?

Isomac

Since 7344 Days

I was just testing the ecosystem in Vue. I didn't create any of the trees or textures myself. Too much work after work ;)

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Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan 2
Rocktober!

Frozpot

Since 7335 Days

Cheater ;)

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Oooh, Profound, isn't it?

Frozpot

Since 7335 Days

Alright, for those interested in anatomy and muscle position, I saw this and not only is it great for snatching stills, but it's a great video too!http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xbzbmp_fight-scie...

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Oooh, Profound, isn't it?

Since 7600 Days

That's a great tip and a great idea, thanks!

Actually I had a similar idea but I tried to use... ahem... solo videos where.. scantily clad ladies... take care of their business... as reference. It wasn't a terrible idea!! It's just really.. hard to concentrate on what you're looking for!

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Since 7600 Days

Have you guys tried different pen sizes for your tablets? I'm considering getting one that's a bit more pencil like in thickness, but I kinda dunno what they're like.

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Since 7577 Days

I want one. The stylus that came with my Cintiq 12WX is *HUGE*.

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Since 7600 Days

Yeah I kinda miss having something more pencily, but at the same time I'm worried that extended use of something pencily causes more strain on your hand.

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Since 6902 Days

I think the standard pen for the intuos tablets are great (same as the cintiq 12wx tablet). Graphire/bamboo though, not so much. You get used to it, and just thinking of how much additional peripheral or replacements cost is enough to give you horrible nightmares and possibly an ulser. As for me, my pen dissappeard (i have my intuos tablet at school and a bamboo at home right now) and so i might ahve to actually fork out the 1000 sek (roughly 140 USD) it costs to buy a new fucking pen. Yay.

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"I still don't know if snakes make good pets, but at least they've got your f****g back."

Since 7600 Days

Yeah they cost a fortune. It's funny, a friend I was talking to reminded me that there are replacement....... um.. okay so the english word escapes me. The tip of the pen, like? You can remove that and replace it with more/less springy ones. I taped mine to the inside of the plastic case my pen came in... and SHOT IT INTO SPACE (have forgotten about it and now god knows where it is).

I don't even remember how to remove them. Been fiddling with the pen for five minutes now.. I suppose I just use tweezers and pull it out...

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Since 7577 Days

Yeah, they just pull out. They come with a little metal thingy that does the trick, but it's basically just a cheap set of tweezers. I've seen cheaper pens online, but I do specifically want something with less.. girth. The standard pen really is quite fat. It's not terrible, but given the option to use something slimmer, I would probably go with that.

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Since 6902 Days

Before my pen got commandeered i had replaced the standard plastic nib with a spring nib. My personal preferred tool for removal; teeth :P

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"I still don't know if snakes make good pets, but at least they've got your f****g back."

Since 7600 Days

I'm just in such a buying mood! I'm making a renewed effort to really get in the game proper with doing this proffessionally, as opposed to just doing comissioned stuff every now and then and mostly surviving on short term employment. I'm a creature of habit and uncertainty scares me, but this constant struggling to find rubbish jobs is bound to eventually give me stomach soars from the anxiety.

And what better way to communicate to yourself that you're serious about something than BUYING A THING? It's how my hockey career started and lasted a full two months! I have hockey gear coming out of my butt even now, 18 years later, because I dunno where to stash it.

But learning from mistakes is for jerks. I wanna buy a thing. I should probably get a computer that doesn't throw up as soon as something on screen moves a little, though. That could be my thing.

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Since 7577 Days

As a designer, I always appreciated hanging around gamers and, in the arts, computer animators. Why? Because they all use PC's and don't give me shit for it. I exist in an industry ruled by Apple, for whatever reason, and people literally can not believe that you can accomplish the same results on a Windows PC. I don't get it. Platform is meaningless when you're dealing with exactly the same fucking software. Do you know how hard it is to shift from one platform to another? It's simply not! The command and apple keys are basically mirrored control and alt keys. WOW. Trying stuff.

Not that I don't understand using Macs in a work environment. People are absolutely daft when it comes to maintaining Windows. It's practically rocket science to most people.

/rant

@Simon: I want to buy stuff too. I'm a little poor right now, but I really want an HP Touchsmart 2 convertible tablet PC. It's not a particularly good tablet, as the LCD panel leaves a lot to be desired, but it's the only tablet I've found that has every feature I'm looking for in a portable. It's small, it has a Wacam digitizer and a multi-touch capacitive digitizer, it has good battery life, and it has a GPU (most have intel integrated graphics, yuck). I just want something that I can draw on, on the go, but I'd also like it to be capable of handling some light gaming. It's also cheap, as tablets go, coming in under $1000 fully loaded.

That's what I wanna buy.

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Not that I don't understand using Macs in a work environment. People are absolutely daft when it comes to maintaining Windows. It's practically rocket science to most people.

/rant

@Simon: I want to buy stuff too. I'm a little poor right now, but I really want an HP Touchsmart 2 convertible tablet PC. It's not a particularly good tablet, as the LCD panel leaves a lot to be desired, but it's the only tablet I've found that has every feature I'm looking for in a portable. It's small, it has a Wacam digitizer and a multi-touch capacitive digitizer, it has good battery life, and it has a GPU (most have intel integrated graphics, yuck). I just want something that I can draw on, on the go, but I'd also like it to be capable of handling some light gaming. It's also cheap, as tablets go, coming in under $1000 fully loaded.

That's what I wanna buy.

Since 6902 Days

That's because the apple tards don't know how to protect themselves from the "dangers" of owning a PC. Let's face it, PC maintennance is too difficult for them hipsters :)

That aside it's just their goddamn identity crisis, they need to cling to apple because apple is hip and cool and PCs running windows are evil and corporate and can possibly give you the super aids if you use it for too long. Turtleneck ftw.

Then again, you pretty much gave the strongest argument yourself when pointing out that most production work is done on PCs and not Macs.

Use whatever you like, but from where i'm standing it seems a PC usually gives more bang for the buck, has better software support and a much more open environment overall. I don't see any cons aside from maybe having to run some anti-virus software if you work and play on the same rig.

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"I still don't know if snakes make good pets, but at least they've got your f****g back."

Since 7577 Days

Posted by Megido

That's because the apple tards don't know how to protect themselves from the "dangers" of owning a PC. Let's face it, PC maintennance is too difficult for them hipsters :)

No fuckin' doubt. And lets face it, graphic design is a profession filled to the brim with fucking hipsters. I fucking hate that word by the way. It's become a little ironic. Hipster is absolutely an internet hipster thing to say now. ;) But when it comes right down to it, platform is really ambiguous to me. It does, however, need to be Mac or PC, because lets face it, everything else is so far behind when it comes to software. But so long as Adobe pumps out PC branded editions of Creative Suite, I'll be perfectly content working with Windows.

It is a more difficult platform to maintain, so if you're really useless with technology, there's no reason not to use a Mac if it gets the job done. But I'm not, and I like my PC.

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