Bishop Steiner, on 21 May 2014 - 04:00 PM, said:
btw, aren't you gonna show me how to make my crimson dynamo griffin look better?
Promises are Promises, I hold mine. Sorry for the late reply.
Please do not take any of these things personally, I know how much it sucks if someone talks about the "weak" parts of your work, especially when you are such a master at drawing mechs free hand.
I am not an Ironhawk nor an Odanan nor a Hayden, but there are some things I learned that you should know too. This is criticism on a very high level, your repaint is much better than 99,9% of the other players could do. Also, I am trying to write this understandable for everyone so don't think I think that you are a total newb to this.
How a Template works
After Ironhawk cleaned up that mech by hand (removing Insignias and Letters/Numbers left on it by the PGI concept artist) he has to mask it out. This mask is then filled with white and the "soft light" effect is applied to it. This is the "Soft Light" layer in these pictures.
This turns THIS
Into this
It brightens up the colors and make the colors look rather same, by keeping the shadows.
Now, the first mask is duplicated and laid ABOVE the previous layer but the "color" effect is applied to it. I am talking about the "Bleach" layer now.
This kills the colors completely. The mech is now white, the shadows look kind of real and we did not loose any pixels or created artifacts by "hard" changes and rendering the images into jpg or png, since this is all done by layer settings.
Now the fun starts. The mask is duplicated AGAIN.
The "multiply" effect is applied to that new layer and the "Multi Base" layer is created.
As you can see, nothing changes. It only changes, when we create a coloured layer and apply a cut mask. This means, only the shape of the layer directly underneath it is affected by that layer. It could also be called a child layer or something.
It now looks like this
The reason for this step is, that if people would draw into the Multi Base layer directly, they would be drawing over the borders of the mask, which means they would be drawing over the borders of the mech. Also, caused by the direct impact of the multiply effect, the colours would be messed.
This concludes the basic explanation.
Now, let's look at the more advanced stuff!
So. This is your mech right here.
Advice #1
This relates to the insignia, the logos on your mech.
I did not transform the image of the Clonetrooper, I just kept it that way to make it more obvious.
If you just slap an image on your mech, it looks like this. The imgage completely overlays the underlying mech. Sure, you could use transparency but that would look bad to be honest.
BUT! Since we created our clever layers, we can use them to make it look like the Clonetrooper IS basically the paint of the mech. How? Simply by making the layer that includes the insignia/logo/picture another cut mask.
Now, keep in mind, to make it look real I would have to divide the image into different section and transform them accordingly to the angle of the different mech elements. I'm not going to do that since that is a **** ton of work. Just to give new people an idea how much work repaints might take.
Advice #2
This relates to THIS
Barrel.
It already looks pretty good. The fact that you didn't just slap it on there and created some SSAO-like shading resembles your experience in drawing. I like that. Although there are some pretty nifty tricks to make it look even more realistic.
The edges of your shadows were too sharp and the PPC itself was too high-res.
What I did was just some quick and dirty brush over with 5-20px and 0-50% feather brushes with 20-50% opacity. I also masked the barrel and gave it 0,2px of gaussian blur. That's all. So this is not perfect at all, but it took me around 90 seconds and it looks more realistic IMHO.
You basically have to look at the whole mech. Look at the lighting and the way the shadows look, then zoom in and look at your modification. Zoom out, zoom in, brush over a bit, zoom out, look at it again, correct if needed, proceed if you are happy with the result.
Advanced Advice
What makes Ironhawks Repaints so special and amazing looking is his reinvention of the lighting in the concept arts.
Not only does he clean up the mechs and add damage states, no as if that weren't enough already to make us green of envy, he rethinks Alex' lighting completetely. I marked some of the parts where you can obviously see it. Look at that Shield, it almost looks like rendered in-engine with a material applied to it. That is some serious talent/skills.
(Original Pic:
http://atlashunters....by-ironhawk.png)
I can not tell or teach you how to do that since I can't do it myself, the nearest I got to it was this:
I hope I could help you Bishop and maybe someone else with this. If you have any questions, or if any of the Pros need to correct me, feel free to ask or do so.
Edited by Iqfish, 22 May 2014 - 03:43 PM.
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