Author Archives: thumper71

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About thumper71

Avatar of the Universal Imagination

Maliciously Innocent

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      Some of you may have noticed that my workflow on this image has been a little bit different. I started with my sketch and didn’t bother to clean up my linework at ALL. I even laid my colors down on one layer. What gives?

      I’m trying to show you guys that there’s more than one way to get the job done. A lot of people will try to convince you that there’s only one and its theirs. But you honestly have to try different techniques!  For me, my style is an amalgam of all of my influences; sci fi, comic books, anime and porn. Yes porn.

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does it show?

        You may have other graphic styles influencing you. Go for it! It’s okay to copy someone else’s style when you’re starting out, but eventually you will notice that you admire bits and pieces of a lot of artists.

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       You may have noticed that I brushed my flat colors in then used my burn and dodge tools to get tonal range on the skin.I’m not going for realism here, more of a cartoon style effect. Later I’ll add shadows and highlights with a soft brush set at about 20% opacity. I used this on the leather and her cleavage and got a pretty good effect.

     Don’t be afraid to experiment. It may not always work out, but it will always pay off.

Pretty People Don’t Lie

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     There’s a reason now for why this isn’t linked to my Facebook page. I’m being harangued by a lot of pretty girls to draw their images. Remember the redhead I was drawing for awhile? Well she’s a close friend (eyes front buddy, no hanky panky here) and she put the word out.

       Anyway…yes the above image looks a little sketchy. Usually I would do my lines and delete it; it never occurred to me that I was leaving out a whole step in my process. My bad!

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Maybe this step too?

     Lately I’ve noticed that my hand shakes. Not a lot. I’m sure a normal person wouldn’t notice,  but the ability to create smooth arcing lines is kinda useful. I’ll admit that formal training may help, so I’m going to take some art classes next semester. Stay tuned…

Energetic Possibilities

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      TaDaaaaa! I’m done with all my client based art, so onto the fun stuff!  Just in time too, because I was beginning to feel a little exposed. On the plus side, my art got better, so no complaints.

      My furnace broke down weeks ago and since I live in the mid Atlantic area, that’s a big deal. It hasn’t stopped me from pretending that I’m a starving artist at the turn of the 20th century, working on commission. Only you know, without the hassles of walking EVERYWHERE.

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       I have a couple of ideas for images that I jotted down when I was too busy with the work of others to do them. Looking forward to conquering the riddle of hair (hint:my digital skills need serious work). But hey, if all pork chops were perfect, we wouldn’t have hotdogs, right?

Catastrophic Success

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    First off, if you can, please check out the newest edition of ImagineFX! There’s a lot of cool art in it, plus a tutorial from Stanley Lau(Artgerm).
  
    Second, I’m starting to get really good at creating digital fx and graphics. How good? I am being asked to do a LOT of it! Since I’m a contractor and it’s not part of my job description, I shouldn’t have opened that Pandoras box, but it’s too late for take backs. Plus, I’m being asked to travel more. As a result, my art has slowed to a crawl.

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Damn my talented brain!

      My clients, who are mostly bodybuilders,  are also getting kinda cagey.  They want the artwork, but more of them don’t want to be seen in unfinished states, not to mention two of them gave me photos that had been published by a guy on a paysite.I don’t want to get into any copyright infringement issues, so I rescheduled something more private. The upshot of which is that I’ve drawn about 23 images and still need to do several cosplay pieces!

   Didn’t I ask for this?

Switch Throw

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          I’ll never understand why some people are constantly being abject dirtbags. After all, what reward can there truly be in such behavior? I guess it’s a crime of consent; if you’re too “nice” to stop them, that’s your flaw not theirs…
         This little rant is due to a potential customer that I should have seen coming a mile away. The request seemed innocuous enough; a favor that was needed by someone who considered themselves a friend. My usual response is “what’s the favor? ” in which case I can freely refuse.

        I didn’t heed my own advice.

        So in the end I had to cancel all of it. Every bit. Of course the person is angry at me, but since they had NO INTENTION TO PAY,  I felt justified in my refusal. You heard right. They wanted an entire wall size painting of a 13 member family by Christmas as a favor.

      Parasites. You never know where you’ll find them.

Mobile

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         Took a break from the craziness of competitor art to do a piece for a facebook friend. A lot of people seem to like it, so it’s something that I’m glad to have completed.

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         To keep from losing interest or burning out,  I decided to do something with the prismacolor markers that came with my college tools. To be honest, I never understood the big craze for using them; digital art was new to me and more exciting. However, now that everyone and their mother are extolling the copic markers, I decided to try them.

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      Right away there was a different feel to the technique of using them. It felt more…digital. It was as though the layering of colors that I used in Photoshop applied! After that, I was into it.

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        While I wouldn’t want to draw this way all the time,  it could easily find it’s place among my skill sets.  I was drawing on Bristol board paper, but I’ll check to see if something better is out there. In the meantime, it’s back to my regularly scheduled projects…

Butcher

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        I have a list of images as long as my arm and even if I could do one a day, it would take me two months!  I should be excited but that’s not the word for it. Overwhelmed is.

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       Not only that, most of these are getting a background. I can do it,  but it requires a little more thought and planning. You look at certain people and ideas come to mind. For instance this guy had a very primal theme; Atlas.

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        He’s not a massive person. Still the image gave me a good starting point. I ran with it from there.

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       So this is as far as I got before I had to leave for work. Promised piece is coming up!  In the meantime, enjoy your day.

Everything Needed

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    Last week, I showed you how far I’d gotten but not the steps before. Yeah a lot of things change when you’re working on a picture. For example…

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         In the earlier versions, something kept bothering me. Once I began shading it came to me; her left I seemed wonky! Now, I could have went back to the beginning and redress it on that layer, but instead I simply erased it.
         Using the magic lasso(W), I drew a selection around the other eye, then copy merged the area. Make sure you choose copy merged from the edit menu, otherwise it will only copy the selected layer of art!
         After you paste a new copy, move it to the area. While still highlighted, go into your transform set and choose ‘flip horizontally’. This will create a mirror image of the other eye. Of course, it can’t look exactly the same, so I recommend using your skew and rotate functions to align it properly and scale it correctly. In my case, I had to select the pupil, move it to create the illusion of looking forward and then shade the area.

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She looked a little like Popeye before I fixed her eye...

     Remember, the most important part of your image is the linework proceeding the actual coloring. However, if you make a mistake, you can always fix it.  That’s all for me, I gotta get back to drawing!