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2DIron Man

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  • evil_genius_180evil_genius_1804256 Posts: 11,034Member
    They all look good to me. Though, the latest one is definitely the best. The hair is looking fantastic.
  • BlueNeumannBlueNeumann615 Posts: 1,275Member
    Congrats on getting on the header!
  • TALON_UKTALON_UK2 Posts: 0Member
    Fantastic work, and congrats on the Header spot. Well deserved.

    :thumb:
  • ArmondikovArmondikov0 Posts: 0Member
    Sweet! The last time I was up there was before the last big server crash and data loss, and I can't remember what it was for.
  • ComcoComco317 Posts: 1,281Administrator
    Congrats on the header, mate. Very well deserved. :cool:

    That Mila Kunis piece is fantastic. You're so close to photo real there. Agreed on the hair, but you're getting closer with each pic. On Mila, her...god, I'm a science fiction 3d nerd, not a hairdresser...her 'specular highlights' lol are were it looses that realistic look. And, as you said, where the hair meets the scalp.

    I'm no 2d artist - I have massive respect for people like yourself who can actually, you know, draw :) - but I wonder if a slightly brighter, slightly thinner/sharper set of highlights over what is already there on Kunis' hair would just finish it off. It appears to be more of a final execution issue than a systemic technique problem that you'd have to scratch and start again. It's so close...

    Out of interest - why MyPaint instead of a more dedicated drawing app? Is it the cost? Or the challenge?
  • ArmondikovArmondikov0 Posts: 0Member
    (this has turned into a bit of an essay)

    I see your point on the hair. I think it's just a side-effect of me getting lazy after a point! The easy fix is to go to Photoshop and play with the dodge and burn tools to work on hair highlights - I used to do that. But, and this segues into your second question, you can end up using the tools that Photoshop provides as a crutch. If you watch some time-lapse videos of even professionals work, you can see them fixing and twisting things with layers and the Liquefy tool throughout - and I'm not against using the tools available to get the job done, but I fear an over-reliance on them. I can't find the video as I've forgotten the artist who did it, but they were painting Daenerys Targaryen and I swear they spent 40% of their time in that video simply adjusting with the lasso tool and the transform options.

    MyPaint strips out a lot of that. You get layers, a fairly powerful brush engine (but based only on circular/oval dabs, rather than textured brushes) but no cut/paste/move/transform/skew/resize, no symmetry, no Liquefy, no dodge and burn or clone tools. It's not so much a challenge as it trains you to actually draw - as if you're on pen and paper. Get back to basics, and you can start thinking a bit more about what you're painting rather than going ahead and think "fix it in post". And that's just good practice, once you've experienced that, you can go back to using the fancy tools to fix things and maybe spend only 2-3% of your time fiddling instead. But the end result is that I've come further in 12 months on MyPaint than I did in 4 years in Photoshop. In short, MyPaint is a dedicated drawing application.

    There are also a few other advantages to MyPaint. It's free and open source - always good. It's also small - Krita (the main free-and-open-source Photoshop equivalent), for instance, is a few hundred Mb, MyPaint is about 19 Mb and so gives you quite a bit of bang for your byte. It's also lightweight and fast to open - and it opens instantly to a blank canvas that's functionally infinite in extent. I.e., you don't need to click "new" and set your dimensions and colour space and DPI. And if you want a larger drawing, just draw it - you don't need to extend the canvas size manually. So the time from "I want to draw something" to putting a line down on the screen is about 3-4 seconds (no staring at an Adobe splash screen for an age). That all sounds fairly trivial, but it's surprising how big an impact it makes to productivity, and it's also surprising how little I miss the tools found in Photoshop for the actual drawing part.
  • MartocticvsMartocticvs444 Posts: 524Member
    I never liked Photoshop for painting; used Corel Painter instead. Quite old now though and haven't had time to mess around with anything for ages - wasn't aware of MyPaint before, so might give that a go next time I get the urge and have free time as well!
  • TALON_UKTALON_UK2 Posts: 0Member
    If I'm doing 2d art I tend to still like to draw by hand old skool style, and then scan it into my computer for computer colouring. I used to sketch digitally when I had a tablet for work, but haven't used one for a while, but to be honest kinda prefer getting my hands dirty with a bit of pen and paper. Like the results you're getting here though. You use a tablet I'm guessing?
  • ArmondikovArmondikov0 Posts: 0Member
    Yes, a Wacom Bamboo tablet. I've not sketched on paper in a couple of months, but I occasionally go back to it. Just recently picked up some canvases so will be actual paint painting again some time this summer.

    Near-enough finished with Amanda Seyfried - done with a combination of MyPaint and Krita. Now perhaps to get back to Thor.

    amanda_seyfried_by_armondikov-d92w98v.png
  • evil_genius_180evil_genius_1804256 Posts: 11,034Member
    She looks fantastic. :thumb:
  • TALON_UKTALON_UK2 Posts: 0Member
    Those are all excellent.

    :thumb:
  • OzylotOzylot332 Posts: 0Member
    First off, incredible work. And I have to thank you for mentioning MyPaint, it's been exactly what I've been looking for. I recently got a tablet that came with a stylus and have started drawing again after years of not. This is very inspiring, someday I would love to be able to get to this level. Nice work, keep it up!
  • ArmondikovArmondikov0 Posts: 0Member
    Ozylot wrote: »
    First off, incredible work. And I have to thank you for mentioning MyPaint, it's been exactly what I've been looking for. I recently got a tablet that came with a stylus and have started drawing again after years of not. This is very inspiring, someday I would love to be able to get to this level. Nice work, keep it up!

    Just wondering, do you get pressure sensitivity with that? Out of all the bells and whistles you can get with graphics tablets, decent pressure sensitivity is the only thing I'd characterise as absolutely essential.
  • ArmondikovArmondikov0 Posts: 0Member
    Also, since this is on the header, I figure I may as well keep it up to date. Have returned to Thor and have started smoothing things out a bit.

    thor_3_by_armondikov-d93aunh.png
  • evil_genius_180evil_genius_1804256 Posts: 11,034Member
    Nice work on Thor so far.
  • OzylotOzylot332 Posts: 0Member
    Armondikov wrote: »
    Just wondering, do you get pressure sensitivity with that? Out of all the bells and whistles you can get with graphics tablets, decent pressure sensitivity is the only thing I'd characterise as absolutely essential.

    Yep, I have a Asus Vivotab note 8 that has a wacom stylus built in. Not fancy, but not terrible either.

    Nice work on Thor! I like that you posted a screen shot. Do you have a particular favorite brush?
  • ArmondikovArmondikov0 Posts: 0Member
    The defaults assigned to the number keys are mostly what I use. "2" and "3" are good basic pencils. I usually start with "2" as it's fainter, to do rough blocking, then "3" for detail and line work. Now, strictly speaking you don't need to do that with digital work because you can always erase thick lines or reduce transparency of the layer, but I suppose it's habit from pencil-and-paper.

    The main brushes I then use are the ones assigned to "9" and "0", which are made by a coder/artist called Deevad, called the "digital" and the "mixbrush" respectively. The good thing about the mixbrush is that it has a slight blend/blur built into it. BUT, this blend/blur will sometimes result in washing out your colours so you need to be aware of that.

    Beside that I mostly just stick to the ones in the "classic" tab. So blending with the "wet knife" one, as it has a hard edge so can leave some texture behind after softening - but with that always keep an eye on the opacity of the brush, or it will just scrape away everything. And also the "bulk" brush, which is useful for filling large areas because it's not a resource-intensive brush to operate with so you can make it as big as you like - filling large areas with the Deevad brushes will result in some obvious slow-down unless you have good graphics acceleration.

    The only other thing I do is keep my left hand nearly constantly anchored to the ASDF keys as those control opacity and size. I had a much better time with Krita after reassigning those keys to the brush controls.
  • OzylotOzylot332 Posts: 0Member
    Very cool! Thanks for the info!
  • BinkermanBinkerman0 Posts: 0Member
    Excellent work Chris, particularly with Kunis .. Well done ! :thumb:

    Jas
  • ArmondikovArmondikov0 Posts: 0Member
    Finally ticked this scene off of the "to do" list. And got a bit more experience with the brushes in Krita:

    hulkbuster_by_armondikov-d9i083g.png
  • ArmondikovArmondikov0 Posts: 0Member
    Also, relevant for today:

    behold_the_metatron__alan_rickman__by_armondikov-d9nwsuq.png
  • evil_genius_180evil_genius_1804256 Posts: 11,034Member
    Yeah, I heard about that. Damn shame, he was a fine actor. Nice work, it makes a nice memorial piece. I love the movie that is the inspiration for it too.
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