Eep, fantasy! *image heavy*

[Jane Radstrom]

I've been lurking here for a few months but I haven't posted much of this stuff out of... intimidation I guess. :) But I will bite the bullet and see what you guys think! I do RPG commissions, basically people send me a description of their character, or a screen shot from a game, and I make images for them. So really it is not character design - I just interpret their description & come up with the poses and layout.

Many times what I make are these magelo backgrounds for EQ players. A program opens in those boxes and shows their skills & the stats on their gear.


http://www.velondra.com/images/digital/najahmag.jpg
http://www.velondra.com/images/digital/jimmay.jpg
http://www.velondra.com/images/digital/daeriussig.jpg

(This one is a character from a D&D game)
http://www.velondra.com/images/digital/skytheen.jpg

(these have modified screen shot backgrounds)
http://www.velondra.com/images/digital/almabella.jpg
http://www.velondra.com/images/digital/trufflemag.jpg
http://www.velondra.com/images/digital/kaysig.jpg

I would love to hear your comments! Though these are done & delivered, if you have some critique I would love to hear it for my next ones.

[theincredibleandy]

Lots of work! Nice variety with backgrounds, too. Helps gives us a feel for the characters. Some suggestions, though:

• When doing something like a fireplace, don't use too much brown/orange. The fireplace should be very chromatic and bright, with everything else being darker and more muted. You did it a little, but you could definitely push it more.

• With your Ghettodealer I can tell that you're using tiny brushes. Only use tiny brushes to paint tiny details. I know so many people who try to use small brushes to make smooth rendering, and it NEVER works. When you paint, every brush stroke shows, whether you like it or not. Thus do what you can to do your piece with as few brushstrokes as possible.

• Finally, pay attention to your edge relationships. Some of the overlaps get kind of mushy (like the guy in the inn), so make sure the edges are firm where they need to be. It's a basic cleanliness thing, and it'pretty easy to fix if you're using photoshop or painter. Whenever the edge is how you like it, just click "preserve transparency" in your layers palette (or "lock transparent pixels) and you won't color outside the lines anymore. Also, if you're interested in digital painting techniques, one of my friends has some neat tricks she picked up (the dragonpaint section of www.neondragonart.com).

I didn't mean to go on for so long. Hope some of this helps!

[gasmask]

cool concepts but im seeing alot of errors, and i think you really need to word on your anatomy and draw/paint from life, the same about ur rendering too, for example on the first image the character doesnt really fit the enviroment and looks out of place, her hands are too big and the hair draws all the attention. The background is good tho and the outfit, the incredible pretty much said what i would about image #2....image 3 his hands dont look right and the lighting looks weird to me, at first i didnt know what was going on, on image 4 the guy doesnt look like he could hold that sword at all and ur light source on his armour is really random...define ur lights and darks better and look up owl referances cause at first i was confused by it..image 5 has alot of anatomy problems for instance her legs are so far apart it looks like shes about to split in half and her hands are off. image 6 is cool, but im not sure if hes a midget cause he has that sorta build to him which i think is cool. and the last id look at dog referances, all and all these are pretty cool concepts, good costumes, but like i said before, practice and use referance, and work from life.

[Jane Radstrom]

Hi guys, thanks very much for taking the time to give me such detailed comments! I really appreciate it.

Andy, I looked through your website - your stuff is awsome! I know what you mean about making every stroke count when they are visable, it is something I absolutely envy. I hope that with practice I can achieve that look. Do you have any tips? You are able to do that beautifully, I especially love the shirt on the first piece in your gallery. And edge relationships! This is something I was recently introduced to, previously I had never thought about the importance of it. It is definitely a weakness, and I will pay particular attention.

Gasmask, thank you for writing out some crits on each one! I try to work frequently from life, but I know I need alot more practice before I can come up with convincing anatomy from my head. The big sword: I know what you mean. The guy said his sword was about 5 feet big, when I asked him how big a human was he said normal size, and his character not too muscular! I realize now though that the handle should have been smaller so he could get a good grip on it. The gal wanted to be really really curvy, as her nickname is "curvy nervy". I have gotten alot of comments about the size of the gap, though.. so I must have over done it. :( The guy in red armor is indeed a dwarf, a spell caster class. In the last pic it is supposed to be a shaggy black wolf (her husband in animal form), I should have used a reference to make sure it didn't look like a dog. Thanks again for pointing these things out to me.

Thank you both, I will keep everything in mind as I continue!

[theincredibleandy]

tips about brushstrokes, eh? First off, try to think about every brushstroke you make as opposed to trying to create a form with a bunch of them. For example, one good way to paint form is to block in an entire shape with the shadow tone and paint the light on top. Light literally works like that (light comes forward, darkness recedes), so you can hardly go wrong doing it like this.

For edge relationships, think about space. When things turn in space, they leave soft edges. When they overlap, the edges are hard. Value change might be subtle, but edges are pretty much the same. For the sake of focus/contrast, you might want to make all your edges a little softer, only crispening certain edges to draw attention (like a camera lens). By the way, shadows are the same way: shadows where the form turns in space are soft, but cast shadows leave harder edges.

In the end, look at good painters and steal from them. When you steal from enough people, it somehow becomes completely original. If you want to learn the efficiency thing, you can always go to goodbrush.com and get blown away by Craig Mullins and his THOUSAND fast paintings.

Hope this helps, and glad you like my site. (I updated it, by the way, so now it has more bells and whistles. Yay!)