Nique's happy fun time thread ~ Super general discussion

[Docent]

Hmmm... I don't really keep track of how long I actually actively work on things. I did start it two days ago though on the 6th. Only a little bit that day though and finishing the whole sketch then the clean inking happened on the 7th plus most of the coloring, today I only had the shading left on the metal bits and the sleeve to do. Maybe in the neighborhood of 6-8 hours? I spend a lot of time just staring at it while I work too.

Hmm. Without wanting to enter the level of personal lifeblog, that totally creates all sort of mixed emotions with me. I'm envious of the patience but also the skill to do that kind of drawings. At the same time, I know I never really spent much time improving my artistic skills, so I don't have any reasons to be ashamed of my limited ability. Logically, I know that, but that doesn't prevent me from being somewhat jealous and perhaps even defensive. So yeah, totally jelly, and much <3 for the elezen!

It takes me about 2~3 hours to produce the results I showed in the thread, and that's with me cheating to cutting down time pretty much on every corner, like limited myself to three shades for shadows/highlights/normal colors and my self-imposed 30 seconds "backgrounds" which seem to have accidentally created a style that some people enjoy.
At the same time, I'm somewhat purposedly doing a throwback to 8-bit color styles, probably because I grew up playing Sega Genesis games like Phantasy Star, and they had extremely limited palettes. Heck, I even save all my images in 256 color .GIFs! :P
Maybe someday, I'll kick myself in the butt and finally make my dream game on tablet or on the web, some kind of hommage to Dragon Force and Final Fantasy. But then I cry at the amount of work all those animated sprites, portraits and such will take!

That turned down to be a much longer post than I expected, so I'll just leave those here:

[Myranda]

...limited myself to three shades for shadows/highlights/normal colors and my self-imposed 30 seconds "backgrounds"...

You'd maybe be surprised to find out we're not terribly different in that regard. I avoid BGs much of the time, and I often do only work with 3 brightness levels per color, but I set them to a low opacity and have pen pressure also control opacity to achieve the smooth look. Partly it's because I think I'm terrible at cel shading. >.> This elezen one was a bit of an experiment actually, I added in some blue tones into the darker skin areas and yellow to the highlights rather than keeping it to purely pink/peach tones. First time I've really done that.

Also many many many many many layers and clipping masks.

[Rester]

What Mount will be your mode of transport in 2.0?

GOOBUE!

me cheating to cutting down time pretty much on every corner, like limited myself to three shades for shadows/highlights/normal colors and my self-imposed 30 seconds "backgrounds" which seem to have accidentally created a style that some people enjoy.

"Cheating" as you put is something I actually encourage!
Unless you are going for photo realistic focusing more on he entire picture and less on the tiny details is better in my opinion.

Especially since as you already kinda noticed that little shortcuts can eventually help someone create a style~

My own style developed like that actually. I used to be waaaay more anal retentive about lines and details and correct shadows and colors and whatnot. Then I said F it and actually just started using my second sketches (First sketch being undefined details since everything is ovals and outline shapes) as my finished line art just with spending a little more time on them. The only thing I still do a lot is the fact that I tend to use 5 or 6 shades when I color. One base, two highlights, and 2~3 shadow colors. I stopped trying to actively blend them together as well because at that point it feels it doesn't matter as much.

Anywho, just do what feels comfortable and let your style develop. At least that's my word for it.


All this awesome art stuff recently has me wanting to get off my butt and start to get to work on things I said I'd do. Nique~ I got the lineart of your thingy done~
Now I just need to color it....blargh

I MAY have cast Hairga for dramatic effect.