help with rendering?

[TheDirtSyndicate]

this is my first time posting something in the critique center.
i've got a wacom tablet now, and i've been sketching with it quite a bit lately, but i'm having a tough time rendering...
anyway, this is one of my better attempts, but even this took forever.
back and forth, back and forth, back and fucking forth... it seems like some of you guys here can do 10 times better than this in about 10 minutes...
anyway...
any kind of feedback would be greatly appreciated.

without further ado, meet BunBun:

[TheDirtSyndicate]

oh, and this pic below was my first digital painting with my wacom.
again, im BEGGING for help here, i'm not very happy with what im doing... am i even on the right track? was there an improvement from the cowboy to buny boy?
any kind of help would be great

[Emperor]

I'd say you're surtainly on the right track, also good art takes good time, there's no need to hurry your art. I'd also have to say that some art doesn't need (very) good rendering, or any rendering at all, it allready looks good to me(cool bunny! :))

[bennylo77]

Shouldn't this be in the WIP section? i am new here but i read the rules here. i am a little confused now.

[chaosrocks]

things end up where they end up.

I can't really help much with the rendering issues, but Id say your on the right track. Rumour has it that colour depth comes through lots of transparent layers and and working the whole pallet (contrasting colors on a color wheel laid over one another etc).
and never never use pure Black, it goes flat. unless what you are looking for is flat (ie silloutes and inklike effects)

keep working on it!
chaos

[TheDirtSyndicate]

Shouldn't this be in the WIP section? i am new here but i read the rules here. i am a little confused now.

thanks for the crit. it was extremely helpful, i now know how to render perfectly with my wacom in photoshop. amazing, you are THE MAN. massive black should hire you to be their personal critique person, seriously! they should hire you immediately.

[Carnifex]

ok,first things first: where is your lightsource? this is the main criteria for your rendering. think about your environment. is he standing in some place where there are lots of other colours? those would reflect in his shadows.(in this case you've got it in some places,the blue colour). the eye now would be covered completely in shadow because of those straps,except if he is lit up front. btw,it is a step up from the cowboy because you seem more confident. now,what i've heard from others (i'm struggling with rendering myself),is that at first,you should use the largest brush possible,but still feel comfortable with. block in main colour,then light and shadow. proceed to use smaller brushes to get more detailed,and take one area at a time.(f.ex. head first,then hands etc.) on this one,clean up the lines abit more before (some unwanted spots in there). furthermore,i've read in alot of places that you should do base colours underneath the drawing,and when moving to the lights,paint on top of it.(if you don't want the lines to be preserved that is)
you may have seen this tutorial by prom already,but i always think it comes in handy when it's about colours and light:
http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm
lookin good so far,but i'd add some more straps on the rest of his body aswell (lower arms f.ex.),like this,the mask doesn't really add something to the character. good luck!:)

[Michael Jaecks]

You're on the right track. Don't worry. Your cowboy was far bolder than my first attempts on my tablet a few months ago. And BunBun looks pretty cute.

I sense (maybe I'm wrong) with BunBun you were holding back a bit especially with brush hardness and opacity. I think this is pretty common for those that have a lot of experience in traditional media who are new to the tablet. One thing I had to keep telling myself (and still do) is that... its just pixels...its not paint... you can't wreck it... you wont have to throw it away...there's no medium there to overwork and thicken up the canvas. Go ahead and be bold, let the brush strokes show... you can always blend later.

Another thing I found helpful was keeping things in greyscale for a while, just like you always hear people say you should do, and then worrying about color later...coloring over greyscale, whether you're using multiply on the brushes or the lasso tool and then adjusting the color in the tool bar is really easy to do later, after you get the black and white where you want it.

Have you done stuff with the same software just with a mouse before or is the whole digital painting thing new to you? I was a total noob to everything digital before the tablet. It took me two or three weeks to figure out I could change the brush settings. :) Or the smudge tool settings. And even longer to figure out how much I now love coloring with the lasso.

Seriously, just stick with it. It feels like you bought a very expensive coloring book at first, but it gets better quickly. I don't even sketch on paper anymore.

Hope that helps.

[khan]

Keep in mind that the forms that make up BunBun are basically cylinders and egg shapes. Render them as such, then add detail. I think Carnifex's point about choosing your light source and Michael's point about it not being paint, just pixels go hand in hand. Maybe you should overdo the form shading then tone it down to suit the mood of the picture. One of the luxuries of using a computer over traditional media. You have obvious skills, ya just need more time on the computer.

[TheDirtSyndicate]

thanks guys...this really means alot to me. i truly appreciate you taking the time to help me out.
:)