I had thought about picking up some of those (they’re Takara Microman figs, aren’t they?) for that same purpose. They look like they might really be useful. I’ve got one of those wooden mannequins, but those have very little articulation, and just don’t look “alive” enough to help me with drawing characters.
For the blank female figure like you posted, don’t they have variants with different breast sizes? I think I remember reading that somewhere.
I actually have the Chun-Li and Sakura ones, but obviously those aren’t as useful for figure studies, since they have all the extra details and such. Plus they seem sorta fragile (chipped a bunch of paint off of Sakura’s shoulder trying to get it get it to move for the first time)
I got a question about PS foreground/background colour. What do they do? I know in Illustrator, one is the line and the other is the fill. But in PS, are they just there for you to toggle between 2 colours? Or am I not seeing their real function?
Freakin a rook. Just learned something new. Thx for the x and q shortcuts.
twelve. Sometimes they are useful for gradient fades. For example if I want a red faded into a blue the fg color I’d put red and the bg color blue. That’s a good trick alot of people use after they are fully done coloring their picture. They would grad the whole chracter on a mask and either lower the opacity or use the drop menu above your layers to give off different effects. Example i can think of right now would be the metal gear acid cover for psp.
apple u, b, and l applies to this. All 3 can be done the same way. Let’s change cammys tie to red by lassoing it. After lassoing the selection section you wanna paint press apple(b, u, or l) to adjust. each will do a different thing so experiment. Use to quickly let you see what it looks like. You might wanna paint back into it after you do decide to adjust or else it just looks fake and flat. http://img65.imageshack.us/img65/9873/picture111wa.jpg
Moving onto apple shift I. Pretty much self explanatory. Like if you have your character selected and you want to paint the bg just inverse your slection and paint the bg without touching your character. You can also save a lassoed selection by going to SELECT>SAVE SELECTION. This way you will never ever lose that selection again and you can load it at anytime.
Moving onto the alt button. I don’t have the energy to explain this right now so I’ll hold up on this one. Pretty much you can ask the rest of srk fanart of how to use it. I’ll still get back to it.
Feather tool. Very useful for softening up those hard edges. Damn I just painted a pic and the edges are too hard on my character. have no fear feather it down. This is more useful if you have your items on a seperate layer.
While your at it you can select layes by just pressing apple and clicking on your layer. This automatically lasso your layer without having to do select to select all.
Ok so first select your layer by pressing apple and clicking on the layer. It should now be in lasso form.
Inverse that selection by pressing+apple+shift I. then proceed to pressing shift f6. use a number according to how much you want to feather it. 1 is small father and 10 is a bigger feather. after you have pressed ok, hit delete. You should now have your feathered item. done.
Moving onto actions. Dfist already explained so let’s move on.
finding layers. I used like 30 layers and how am I to find which layer is which and which i painted on? simply press apple+option+control . The arrow should change into a box with lines and an arrow looking tool. click on any part of your picture and it will automatically find the layer you worked on! Cool stuff for unorganized people. If you have 2 layers exactly the same shape this of course will point to the layer on top and not the one underneath.
Moving onto the space bar. Instead of using the navigator on your top right hand side. Just press the space bar to move your pic around. your current icon should change into a hand icon. That’s when you know you are doing it right.
Moving onto apple- and apple+. Pretty much self expanatory. use it to zoom in and zom out.
b, e, l, v are again pretty much self explanatory. Use those to quicken your process.
v- move tool is good after you have selected and lassoed a section and want to move it.
m - same thing here. Good for making quick selections. Press shift m for different marquees. Same applies to all the tools with the arrow drop menus. press shift+shortcut button to toggle.
I have a question. How do I turn my lines into a line-less painting? Do you guys have your line on top while your painting or must I develop some kind of painter’s eye and add color without being able to see my lines?
I’ve had a thought for a thread, but i don’t think it applies to enough artists here, it would be for ppl who can draw guys awesome, but girls shtty and vice versa. I’m just seeing if anyone would need this or help on it…I think it would really help some ppl looking for the edge on that gender. i dunno…
One more thing, if i try and think of a pose and i just make it look wonky, should i just start with copying photo’s before thinking up poses? Or any other suggestions?
(can’t get above figures right now ><)
i look myself in the mirror if see something not right with my pose…cause i dont like to
copy stuffs, and everytime i got stuck, i couldnt find any reference…so the best i can do is pose myself in the mirror and jot it down…
I saw in an article in Wizard about a Superman &batman cover Jim Lee and Alex Ross did. Alex Ross dressed up as batman and posed to get the right lighting, shit looked funny but the cover was awesome.
They look incredibly cool! The articulation looks really good. But how’s the torso? Can you put them in, say, a hunched over position? Like a guy sitting on the floor, hugging his knees to his chest kind of pose?
I don’t think ANY figure can do that Landel haha. you can probably use two figures and lay them on top of each other and connect the parts with your mind.
EDit: that came out wrong haha. but you get the idea.
Anyways, if I’m looking into getting a tablet…does it matter what size I get? Like theres the Wacom Graphire 4x5, or should i get the 6x8 or whatever. Also if theres another brand I should get please suggest away.
Not really a fan of that technique but yeah I’ve seen a lot of ppl using it.