Dire Wolf (Thread updated: Image Warning)

[Acherontia]

Updated post: as I didn't want to make an entirely new thread, here is the Worg I've been working on today. It isn't the best on earth, and his fur came out looking rather like a bison's But I'm proud of it nonetheless. You'll see lots of people helping me further on in the thread, so, thanks guys Hopefully I will be able to take your suggestions & improve; all further suggestions, critiques and comments are welcome.

Original Image in all its gigantic glory

Just the portrait (updated for furry goodness)

As promised, for those who would like to give suggestions,here are the steps in which I created the image. No text to accompany, I'm afraid, but it's pretty self-explanatory. Hopefully if someone sees a massive flaw, they can tell me where in my process I went wrong!

Original post follows.

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I drew this up while testing a new shading style, and wanted to share. It's not great, and certainly not polished (which I'm never particularly good at anyway)--it was drawn on quite a low resolution. Still, someone might get some enjoyment out of it. It's a young WoW drake, or WoW-inspired anyway

Posted on DA here.

All in all I'm pretty happy with the style and may use it in the future, although it's REALLY time-intensive. But I'd like comments & opinions on whether it's pleasing to the eye, and whether anything in particular (either with the drawing itself or the style) would look better with a change!

(Edit--I'm aware he's "missing" one arm, and that one of his legs is stupidly long >.<)

[Starzein]

I really love the treatment you gave the shading, it looks nice and fits the drake, solid, thats the word that comes to mind.
I like the expression too on its face. Thats hard to get but you hit it spot on whimsical almost. I like very much, well done

[cowmuflage]

Keep up the good work!
Um if you need help I'm allright with wow drakes. Well yeah I drew a few and I need to draw more XD

[Fafnir]

That's a lotta smudge.

It works ok around the thigh, but you need to establish where the light and especially shadows are going to be beforehand in order to make a metallic look work ok. Like the thigh, there is a really nice highlighted expanse on the quads and the detailed highlight of the biceps, and nice contrast shading to set those off. The rest of the body except maybe the back portion of the head and jaw is lost in a foggy morass of texture.

The lines are thick for the scale of the picture, maybe half the width you used at most, if you're not going to vary it much. It works ok for the tail, but once you get up to the head it starts getting in the way of the shading.

What you probably want to do, instead of putting shade on and working it like it looks like you're doing, is to make the figure a neutral gray color first, then lay down the strong highlights. Then you can lay down strong shadows near the highlights for the metallic look, and smear away if you want. If that's not what you did, then ehhh sorry, too much process theory.

[Acherontia]

Indeed, the lines are far too thick--it was drawn, as said, in quite a low resolution and then not polished.

However, it wasn't MEANT to be metallic at all. I think the amount of contrast in it makes it look it, so your suggestion of starting with a darker tone than white is probably dead on

I'm working on a MUCH larger image, one with tons of fur, and I think the style will work a lot better with it rather than an MS-Paint doodled outline! I will have to change the white to a gray, though, thanks!

[Xella]

What program are you using to colour/shade/whatever in? There are parts where I can see that the lines were on the same layer as your shading, and they lose a bit of their definition—I think if the two layers were separated, you a) wouldn't have to be so careful (and therefore it'd be much, much quicker), and b) your lines would stand out and not get degraded by the smudge (I'm noticing it mostly by the mouth, a little on the wings, by the claws on the front foot/hand, etc.)

If you're using MSPaint all-round (does MSpaint have a smudge tool these days? Movin' up on the world!), you obviously won't have access to layers so that'll stymie this bit of attempted knowledge-transferrence. If you're using Photoshop I can tell you how to do such (if you don't already know). If you're using some other program, I'm sure I've got a tutorial somewhere in my billions of "OOH PRETTY" bookmarks and can look, lol

(Quasiedit: Also that totally doesn't apply if you're going completely lineless on the picture you're working on, or the area you're smudge-shading is otherwise separated from your surrounding areas already)

[Acherontia]

I was being sloppy, in that case, and just testing out the shading itself--I do have a program (PSP9) that uses layers, but TOTALLY hadn't bothered

The image I'm working on now, with the fur, has both on the same layer as well--but the outline is mostly fur, so it will be smudged in any case or at least softened. Add to that the fact that it's a MUCH larger image, and hopefully the smudging won't be as much of an issue when it comes to the outline.

What do you think so far? Any suggestions for this Work In Progress? Even this part isn't complete--the eyes haven't been shaded, and the ears aren't done--but the head is ALMOST finished.

Now for the rest of the body... So any suggestions BEFORE I do the rest would probably be awesome

[Xella]

Lookin' good! I know you said the ears aren't done but I really like the closer ear to us— it doesn't have the semi-metallic quality of the muzzle (part of that might be that because both the ears and the muzzle are going to have inherently shorter hairs, they're not going to have the long sweeping smudging of the jowls or body, and part of it's that it's just not got the glaring highlights that makes it look metallic, as Fafnir originally mentioned).

You may want to go in, once you've finished an area (or the image as a whole, to avoid getting caught up in details), with a semi-transparent small brush and put in some individual hairs that don't fit the overall pattern of your smudging, in areas like the brow, or on the jowls under the eye, or very short ones on the muzzle. It'll break up blocks of tone and increase the overall "lifelikeness" (not realism, but moving slightly towards it... believability? Yeah that's a better word) because everyone and everything has fly-aways if they have hair. Not a whole bunch or you might as well just paint your fur strand by strand (I don't recommend it, dear god), just enough to add a little bit of interest. I may also be jumping the gun a bit on this bit, too haha

[Acherontia]

Yeah, I definitely intend to on the muzzle! It still looks quite... shiny

One of the crappy things about PSP9 vs Photoshop (at least I think so--I don't have Photoshop >.<) is that you can't really do transparent brushes. You can do different opacities, but they just sort of...smudge LESS. >.>

It's very hard when you're trying to, for example, apply a texture/shading layer over a layer of color--it simply doesn't work, and you wind up with gray muting out the colors. So I'm definitely going to TRY to add tiny fur texturing to the muzzle/cheek, but... well, my mileage will vary

[Xella]

Yeah, you can def. do transparent brushes in photoshop. I do most of my shading these days with a 40% flow/40% opacity hard-edged round of varying sizes, which generally comes out looking the way I want it (unless I do something without lines in which case I just end up facepalming and going "god, why do I do this to myself, this looks awful").

You could possibly manage with a full-opacity small brush of the appropriate shade of grey (preferrably on a separate layer), and then erase a little bit of the "base" of the stroke so as to make it blend in if it looks out of place. When I'm doing little fur touches in Photoshop, I bring the opacity back up to a fairly high amount (but keep the flow down), and use quick strokes, which usually ends up giving the right effect when combined with my tablet. Alternately, if PSP has a burn/dodge tool equivalent, you might be able to get away with using that instead, if the settings on it are right (though it'd take some experimentation, based on the colour I end up using my dodge tool's exposure ends up somewhere between 6 and 40%... but I work in colour almost exclusively because, uh... well mostly because I'm bad and I like colour rofl).

DeviantArt was singularly unhelpful in finding a tutorial geared toward PSP that came out with the desired outcome, about the closest I got was this, which was written for PSP10, and which seems to have opacity as a brush option (and is way off from the desired result, what happened to all the PSP tutorials, DA? I couldn't go five steps without tripping over them a few years ago >:|). I shall keep looking, however!

[Acherontia]

Nice, thanks If you find one talking about texture opacity, PLEASE link, I'll be eternally greatful.

As it is, I am using a smudge brush at about 70-80% opacity (WRIST HURTS) for all of the fur texture on the body... did I mention this is a full-body image? >.>

Anyway, here's what it looks like with some of the facial fur textured, and the ears fixed up a bit. There's still no whiskers or eye shading. So therefore I beg your further expertise...

Bearing in mind it's been shrunk down to 60%, but... Can you see the extra texturing on the muzzle? Is it enough? If not, how much more should there be--double, triple? I need that extra eye, as I'm blind to it for having stared too long

The overall effect I'm *kind of* going for, or at least inspired by, is a proper pencil-shaded sketch. I have no idea how good this is or how close to or off the mark I am, but I at least want to get the facial fur right >.>

[Lupis]

I suggest the same thing Xella did - little hairs. (If you want, I can post an amazing tutorial for fur, this smudge thing is one of the steps. )
I'd say start with little black hairs, then a bunch of tiny light hairs to show the fur patterns. Starting with the dark is important though.
That worg looks really good, though!
Little black hairs at the base of each lock, and white hairs to show the highlights, make it look remarkably realistic.

[Acherontia]

Hmm, can you show me the tutorial, if it has the bit where you say "start with little black hairs, then a bunch of tiny light hairs to show the fur patterns"? Just so I can get a better idea of what you mean, it sounds quite cool!

I generally go in after the fact and take a lighten/darken brush at 1 pixel and 90% or so opacity and use it to highlight/darken in individual hairs. It's REALLY tedious though >.<

[Lupis]

http://www.novawuff.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d35wzvd

It's a very useful technique. I tried it a few times, and though it takes practice, it can get some really nice results.
(Novawuff is stupidly amazing at fur detail. O.o)

[Acherontia]

That is AMAZINGLY well done O.o Photo-realistic even.

I wish I could figure out (if PSP can do it at all) how to do what she (he?) does in step 7--namely, the adding of a separate color layer that doesn't mess with the shading or vice versa. However, as it stands, that fur thing is absolutely awesome. Thanks so much for the link... we shall see if I wind up with the patience to do it properly, or close to!

[Lupis]

Yeah, I always boggle when I see Nova's work.

Step 7 is difficult. I tried (I can give you a link to my attempt on dA if you want) and the color was very difficult. Having a "Color" Blending Layer was a new thing to me, but I can see how it'd be used, if you were very good.
I'm not that good. xD

[Acherontia]

Hmm, was the attempt on PSP do you know? I'll have a look after I finish this image regardless--this one will be in black and white in the end, I think (except maybe brightly-colored eyes, what do you think? >.<) but being able to add a "color" layer would be immensely useful to me o.o

[Fafnir]

Hm, well, I guess my interpretation was pretty off the mark :p

Anyway, the biggest thing I think you are lacking, is an overall composition... Are you working straight from a line image and trying to flesh it out after you have the textures in? In general, that is a mistake - you need a basic idea how the form will look without all the crazy texture that no one will see when it's shrunk to webpage size.

You need to ease up on the nose snarl creases. Google images of wolves snarling, and you will see that the creases are thin furrows, most of the texture some from the upraised skin.

Really nice work on the neck fur though.

[Lupis]

Assuming you're talking about Photoshop, I dunno what she's using. I assume Photoshop CS4. I'm using Photoshop Elements 4.0.

Brightly colored eyes are always nice. Or very pale eyes, with just a hint of color, perhaps in the highlights.
From what I've seen, a little color goes a long way... A smidge of tan or brown on the cheek, for example. But I'm NOT a color pro so that's just my musing! xD

[Fafnir]

The Color layer is a combo hue/saturation thing. The more opaque the paint you use on this layer, the more vibrant the color becomes (i.e. saturated), but if you use thin opacity, you can just nudge the color instead. It really helps to have a tablet to abuse this, but you can made do by just working at it with low-opacity brushes.

It's pretty useful, but I prefer just painting the old-fashioned way.