Elf Portrait art thread: Archer by Ranger M

[SmokemJags]

"In Before The Lock".

Most internet shorthand is irritating to see outside of chat, this is no exception despite only being used on forums.

How ironic.
Making posts that exist only to be deleted seem kinda irritating too. They're very similar to In Before the Lock posts.
That's seriously OT (Off topic) though.

So to get back on topic...
You want a Jormungandr sized portrait for an elf?
Considering 'creeping biggerism' seems to be an issue with units, I'd imagine portraits that should be held to a similar standard. She should look smaller than a drake in a similar style picture, no?

[JW]

Considering 'creeping biggerism' seems to be an issue with units, I'd imagine portraits that should be held to a similar standard. She should look smaller than a drake in a similar style picture, no?

No. It's all about perspective. Portraits come in different perspectives, whereas units in the game all come at you from the same perspective. Therefore units must be scaled appropriately to a certain standard whereas portraits do not.

[Ranger M]

Considering 'creeping biggerism' seems to be an issue with units, I'd imagine portraits that should be held to a similar standard. She should look smaller than a drake in a similar style picture, no?

It would be a shame to restrain people, if somebody wants to make a full body portrait and it is good, then why would you turn it down? Because it isn't the standard way of doing it? It would be a waste of art which is perfectly good and usable.

[Jetrel]

But now that all these improvements are applied, I don't understand why you say "This one won't [be going in], but we can keep refining it as learning exercise." Now that the issues that concerned you have been addressed, why is this image still unsuitable?

Those aren't the only issues.

A large part of it has to do with the giant ball-o-light + lens flare on the hands, which would be really hard for me to tone down. I'm not opposed to having "glowy magic hands", but I'd prefer for the unit to look less like it's about to release a powerful magic attack or whatnot.

Subtley is key, because these portraits will rarely get used in a "I am delfador the great, prepare to die!" sense. This, for example, is why delf isn't dancing with lighting in the new portrait I'm making of him.

[scott]

in a "I am delfador the great, prepare to die!" sense.

This is off-topic here, but I could actually really use one of these.

[Thrawn]

thanks to Jetryl's edit, I'll try to go about changing things--It helps to see what you need to emulate...
I have no problem with redoing the picture, and using existing one solely as tutorial--If I do it again, I can put the nose on right in the beginning , and not have weird flare--The reason I didn't know the extent of it was my computer seems darker screened than others.

Sorry, I've not been working on this stuff, got side-tracked by a funky stech I started that looks like it might make a good curse icon, so I've been fiddling around with it.

[romnajin]

He's a hippy nature guy who lives with animals. He doesn't need to look sexy. Save that for the high elves.

I laughed at that quote of me

[jonadab]

and not have weird flare--The reason I didn't know the extent of it was my computer seems darker screened than others.

If you keep your layers, such things become much easier to "tone down" if necessary.

On another note, I've had another look at Jetryl's edit of the druid, and he's not just doing a little anti-aliasing, he's doing *lots* of it. Here's a detailed shot of three versions of one small area, blown up sans interpolation to 400% so you can see the individual pixels. In the original, the pleats and wrinkles in the skirt were not anti-aliased. My edit looked for places where there was a significant jump, e.g., from #1aa53a to #1ed646 (top edge of the diagonal pleat coming down from the top left toward the middle of the sample), and introduced one pixel's worth of an intermediate shade. This is more anti-aliasing than it had, but look at what Jetryl did in the same place. There are at least two levels of intermediate shades there in his version, as if he anti-aliased once and then went back and anti-aliased his anti-aliasing. In places there's a third level, even. (Probably he used a tool or filter that did it all at once, but nevermind that; it's the effect that's interesting.) He also gave the pleat a top side, and shaded/anti-aliased that similarly. He did this same thing everywhere on the whole image, not just in places. You can zoom in anywhere on his version, and it's like that. Zoomed in like that, looking at all those levels of AA, I would have thought it would look blurry, but zoomed out, it just looks good.

I'm gonna remember this. It's not so noticeable when you look at his original work, because, well, you just figure it looks good because he drew it and he's good. But set side-by-side like this, specific aspects of his technique are apparent.

[Jetrel]

(Probably he used a tool or filter that did it all at once, but nevermind that; it's the effect that's interesting.)

All I used was the brush tool. Painted at the 205x205 res he provided it in, and used a plain, circular brush, of diameter 1-3px, with hardness at 100%. All of this was in a single layer, overlaid on the drawing below. I did the color adjustments with a hue-saturation adjustment layer applied to everything, but that didn't have anything to do with the anti-aliasing.

To anti-alias Thrawn's drawing, I basically painted over most of it. Certainly all of the lineart, and also some of the color-fill areas.

[Ranger M]

All I used was the brush tool. Painted at the 205x205 res he provided it in, and used a plain, circular brush, of diameter 1-3px, with hardness at 100%. All of this was in a single layer, overlaid on the drawing below. I did the color adjustments with a hue-saturation adjustment layer applied to everything, but that didn't have anything to do with the anti-aliasing.

yeah, brush tool makes antialiasing so much easier, everything in my portraits is done with it. The lines just look so much smoother immeditely (although a quick zoomed in touch up helps too). I usually use a 1px brush for lines, and then something higher (as big as I can get) for filling, and between 1-5 for details.

[Jetrel]

yeah, brush tool makes antialiasing so much easier, everything in my portraits is done with it. The lines just look so much smoother immeditely (although a quick zoomed in touch up helps too). I usually use a 1px brush for lines, and then something higher (as big as I can get) for filling, and between 1-5 for details.

Heh. Curiously enough, this was one thing I wanted to mention to Thrawn. This specific thing, you are doing correctly. Some of your lines might be a little wiggly, which just comes from human hands shaking as they do, but you are doing pretty much everything else related to creating your lines in the correct manner.


The shakiness can be alleviated by either using vector tools to make the lines, or drawing at a higher resolution than the final size (suggested to be at least 3x). I've done a bit of both - Li'sar was "inked" with vector lines, and Konrad was "inked" with the brush tool. Some of my old ones were inked with real, physical ink, but that can eat a lot of time, and doesn't look as good as the digital variety, IMO. If you do physically ink the drawing, you'd need to touch it up with the brush tool on the computer anyways.

The vector graphics discussion was split into a new topic in this forum. - mod

[Thrawn]

new thing, shaman--like the mage, done on comp, with layers, and beginning simple to get techinque.

EDIT: I think it is done now...

I know it not other style already in game, but as thats the only elf portrait, I see no need to follow exactly...

[toms]

First, please make a better nose.

And the image looks...uhm... kind of robotic, not lively.

I know that my criticism is not constructive, and I´m not good at beeing it. But I think you can sustain that, and I only want to say what you can improve, IMO.

[Tomsik]

Smallers ears perhaps?

[toms]

Smallers ears perhaps?

Yes, and both the same length...