16 Sep 2006 at 17:29 - 13
Quote:
I'm just telling you what anyone experienced in photoshop is thinking.
I think you should speak for yourself... Just because YOU think it's not original or difficult, doesn't mean everyone does.
Look, I respect your opinion, I just wish people would stop having negative critisizm, and try to give some positive critisizm once in a while. But I know, it's so much easier to bash a person when you're better at something. Yes, yes, you said you weren't trying to attack me, but it sure feels that way.
If you really want me to be more original as you say, try giving some tips. I can take critisizm, but can it be constructive for once please? So I might actually benefit from it? Up untill now, all replies (except for Old 3FL) have not helped me in any way...
Like the saying goes: "everyone's a critic"...
I'm still happily offering my services though ^^
16 Sep 2006 at 21:22 - 14
If it was made in MSpaint it would be worth something.
16 Sep 2006 at 21:36 - 15
You're really taking what I'm saying the wrong way and to an extreme.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sjeng
If you really want me to be more original as you say, try giving some tips.
I already gave you tips, actually draw something in photoshop or otherwise (actual paper) depicting whatever you'd like (creative part) and then color and detail it. Don't go with filters cause those just end up making it cheesy, especially blending options that add a glow. If you'd like some good tutorials on how to do all this in photoshop, how to draw, color and all sorts of other specific little things then you can send me a pm.. But please drop the attitude, I'm not even critisizing your actual pieces you've done: That'd be something like "oh the glow disrupts the scene because it off sets the character from the continuity with the background and a lot of it seems out of place because of perspective" and the like. Drop your guard for a second though, and let the thought sink in that I'm not actually out to get you... I'm trying to help, I don't get kicks from insulting people on a forum for a game I don't even play anymore - and I'm not.
If you want critiquing, here you go... Your first three look nice, the others the quality dropped a lot because of perspective, badly placed filters which in turn throw off the entire scene.. A lot of it is the blending option glows you did, they shouldn't be on the characters and they make it look really bad. The lens flares look cheesy too, as well as a lot of the filters done to the background because its seperating them so much from the actual characters that they seem totally out of place, not in a good artistic way either. A good way of doing it, that some people do is blurring the background to give more focus to the characters - you could experiment with that. In a lot of the pictures you have a character floating, they shouldn't float it throws off everything. Putting them on the ground, taking off the glow and manually adding a shadow would help. I don't mean blending option shadow either, shadows natually under different light sources look very different. Many times shadows come in three layers; Darkest, light, and blurry. Its hard to explain, but just observe how shadows look in real life if you don't understand. What you'd do is manually make three layers behind the character(s) and paint in a black silhouette of the character, distorted to whatever angle the sun is hitting it and, and usually they're very distorted. Most of the times shadows stretch vertically to almost a goofy extent. You'd use soft brushes at 100% opacity, then change the opacity of the entire layer(s) to get the proper effect.
A good thing for you to do for a moment is look at it, and just try to get an understanding of who that character is, whats their story? Why are they there? What are they doing? Why are they standing like this or wearing what they are? Get a good feel for everything, it'll end up making everything go a lot more smoothly throughout the entire process cause you'll have a set picture in your head flooded with information about it, so it'll be really easy to make decisions while composing your art.
Right now you may not be into drawing, thats okay... But later on if you continue to get into 2d digital painting I think you'll slowly merge into it. I could give you a ton of hints, ideas and tutorials for that but the biggest thing is your own creativity and then skill. Skill can improve though, you just have to practice and study how things are in nature. Anatomy, lighting, etcetera.
Okay, for right now.. I'll just jump out and tell you why the glow effects look bad. There is no light source to cause that glowing to occur, if it were actually coming from them then in that case it would be coming from all of them, not just the ending sides (and not inner sides such as inner legs/arms etc. Also, it wouldn't be a bad idea if you were going to use that to ctrl+click the character layer, make a new layer behind it with a solid color behind where the character(s) are, then apply the filter, make a new layer below that and merge the glowing layer into that, that way you can edit the glowing effect you made. Experiment with the smudge tool to drag some of the glowing effect out a little bit at different strengths, and different sized brushes. It'll give a feel for a more bright light source, kinda like the sun putting off rays. Honestly though, I'd just drop the entire glow thing for now cause it does throw the character way out of place.
The reason I said before what I did about this all being fairly effortless and untime consuming is cause well.. Its starter things and your original post is saying your wallpapers are for those that arn't skilled in photoshop (where this is what they'd actually be coming up with - no offense to you). Playing with filters and blending options is really just bearly even tipping the begining of photoshop, theres so so much more you can do. I know it may seem to you like you have photoshop and you're just pretty much awesome and its totally cool that you can do your leet work and get paid for it. But to me it honestly seems like bad manner, I don't really think people that are new or learning something should be selling their services to others.. Its like a student starting medschool and as a freshman there offering a diagnosis to a dying cancer patient cause they read something in a book and thought they were going to make a difference. Well, the thing is.. Its a good thought and all, but it could really end up defeating the purpose of helping someone. If you can understand the connection I'm making. I personally do things like your wallpapers in form of avatars and signatures for absolutely free, and I actually put a lot more work into them in most cases. I do it cause I can, I don't do something I'm not going to like though. If I think it'd be fun to do, I like playing around in photoshop so if I get sometime that I don't have much going on I'll open it up and see what happens. I don't charge for things like that though, I wouldn't unless I was putting something unique there.. Something of my own work. Ah this seems like its going to start sounding really confusing and lose its meaning so I'll just stop.. I hope it atleast somewhat made sense and didn't end up just offending you more. >.<
16 Sep 2006 at 21:46 - 16
Djinn Effer
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High Horse
Anyway, your PS skills are phenomenal! I think your work is worthy of payment for wallpapers, definately. Still might be a bit too pricy.
Think about this: judge the amount of time it takes you to do each picture, and charge accordingly. Don't charge for the end result, charge for the time. If you feel the amount you charge is equivalent to the amount of time spent, then more power to ya.
Otherwise, great work, and always seek to improve yourself, no matter how masterful!
16 Sep 2006 at 21:55 - 17
I've been recently doing images for a Halo2 website, this is a Halo wallpaper I made once.
16 Sep 2006 at 22:17 - 18
Quote:
Originally Posted by arcanemacabre
Djinn Effer
----------
High Horse
Anyway, your PS skills are phenomenal! I think your work is worthy of payment for wallpapers, definately. Still might be a bit too pricy.
Think about this: judge the amount of time it takes you to do each picture, and charge accordingly. Don't charge for the end result, charge for the time. If you feel the amount you charge is equivalent to the amount of time spent, then more power to ya.
Otherwise, great work, and always seek to improve yourself, no matter how masterful!
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