Non-photorealistic Renders (NPR)

tkdrobert

Another go with a program I just learned about called PhotoDonut

Headwax

tkdrobert said:

Another go with a program I just learned about called PhotoDonut

 

Wonderful, thanks for the heads up

 

 

Headwax

mmitchell_houston said:

Sorry I've been quiety lately. Been tied up with work, and then yesterday I had a "nerve burn" done on my knee, which means I cannot spend more than an hour at a time sitting at my computer (or else the knee stiffens up).

I shall return soon, though!

In the meantime, here's another take on the Cowboy illustration I was working on.

 

EDIT: I may have to use the one with the lighter vest -- the first one is closing up too much.

a lot cleaner and easier to read

 

 

philebus

I've been out of things for quite while now. Sadly, my little computer gave up working months ago - it seems to be sort of running again at the moment, so now that I've backed up everything, I'm going to go with it until it finally reaches its end. I hope to be able to buy a new computer sometime in early February.

Anywho, just to get my hand in again, I'm playing about with a variation on what I've been doing already for some different effects. Nothing complicated - a desaturated layer with a lot of contrast Layered (a colour burn, I think) over blue (though as it was a little too blue, I put back a couple of points of colour - the hair and the chair), which all received the usual palette knife treatment in ArtRage. As experiments go, I'm reasonably happy with the look. I'll try a few more images over the weekend before I try and compose something for a book cover.

And in the meantime, I have many, many pages of this thread to catch up on - looks like I've been missing some good stuff from you all!

Sammagi

mmitchell_houston said:

Sorry I've been quiety lately. Been tied up with work, and then yesterday I had a "nerve burn" done on my knee, which means I cannot spend more than an hour at a time sitting at my computer (or else the knee stiffens up).

I shall return soon, though!

In the meantime, here's another take on the Cowboy illustration I was working on.

 

EDIT: I may have to use the one with the lighter vest -- the first one is closing up too much.

I love it! I love the second one and how what you did wit hthe crosshatching effect. Crosshatching is a temptation that is often use very miminally on the face. I like to see more of this style! :)

Sammagi

head wax said:

This is on the famous Nobbys break wall that surrounds our City's harbour entrance. The Red thing is a local icon and ships' beacon.

I left space for Text top left but refrained.

Carrara Job. Filter Forge filters ad infinitum

Any suggestions on Phantom Comic cover text welcome (not the title The Phantom- I'v sorted that one :) )

 

 

Very vintage look to this! Reminds me of the old pulp magazines :)

Sammagi

Cover for issue 3. I'm redoing the second one to make it fit with the plot and story premise.

wsterdan

head wax said:

This is on the famous Nobbys break wall that surrounds our City's harbour entrance. The Red thing is a local icon and ships' beacon.

I left space for Text top left but refrained.

Carrara Job. Filter Forge filters ad infinitum

Any suggestions on Phantom Comic cover text welcome (not the title The Phantom- I'v sorted that one :) )

Absolutely gorgeous, as usual.

-- Walt Sterdan

wsterdan

Leonides02 said:

My friend's D&D character, made into a sketch...

Very nice, very clean. I often like taking a layer like this on top of the origanal render with the blending mode set to "Soft light" or "Overlay" for some interesting effects.

-- Walt Sterdan 

mmitchell_houston

Sammy_jr_mart said:

Cover for issue 3. I'm redoing the second one to make it fit with the plot and story premise.

Very nice! This looks like a cover I might expect to see in my comic shop. A few thoughts from my "editorial eye," though.

• The texture on his shirt isn't doing you any favors. I'd suggest isolating it and smoothing it out. It's clutter that doesn't help add detail, and although it's minor, it does make it look sloopy.
• The logo is almost illegible against the yellow background. I suggest you do one of these things:

1. Change the logo color (red or blue would work here).
2. Create a new layer between the logo and the art and add a transparent gradient, probably a black or dark brown, near the top of the illustration. It should be darker at the top and lighter toward the bottom. This will make the top of the page darker and give the logo more contrast (you could also use a mask and isolate the alien's head, so that the gradient doesn't go over it, but just the background).
3. Follow the instructions above, but go with white or light yellow and lighten the top of the cover.
4. Add a white "glow" around the logo.

You've got a pretty good cover design, but improving the typography would take it to the next level.

NOTE: i've attached two files to show you an extreme example of a cover with a darker region at the top. The first one is really extreme, with the top fading to pitch black (needed to make the back cover text legible). The Christmas cover is more subtle, and to be honest, it looks better printed and online -- the fade is subtle, but it helps the white logo stand out more.

 

philebus

One more experiment before I'm done for the weekend. Largely the same procedure as before - a simply lit render, desturated, then ramped up the contrast and layered over blue. The work in ArtRage was mostly the usual knife and a little oil paint to put back some highlights.

 

Sorry about the removed post - I honestly didn't think one would fall foul of 'nudity' being a monster without 'bits'.

(Image removed for nudity)

eugene_lab

Trying to work with shading and lighting, feel free to critique.

philebus

eugene_lab said:

Trying to work with shading and lighting, feel free to critique.

Hi,

I think the shading on the figure looks good (strong shading that still picks out a bit of detail where it is needed, such as around the clavicals) but the light rays seem to be in the wrong place to my eye. From the figure, I would say that the light should be largely comming from his right but the light rays appear to be coming from behind him. I'm not sure how I would go about presenting light rays from a direction so close to that of the camera - it might be better shown by strong shadows to the figure's left.

Headwax

 

thanks wsterdan  :)  and Sammy_jr_mart

Sammy, I agree with the dark layer behind the text.

eugene_lab ​ - pretty good image - I agree with the light source angle - it looks a bit odd at bottom left - top left is fine to my eye

 

 

 

Sammagi

mmitchell_houston said:

Sammy_jr_mart said:

Cover for issue 3. I'm redoing the second one to make it fit with the plot and story premise.

Very nice! This looks like a cover I might expect to see in my comic shop. A few thoughts from my "editorial eye," though.

• The texture on his shirt isn't doing you any favors. I'd suggest isolating it and smoothing it out. It's clutter that doesn't help add detail, and although it's minor, it does make it look sloopy.
• The logo is almost illegible against the yellow background. I suggest you do one of these things:

1. Change the logo color (red or blue would work here).
2. Create a new layer between the logo and the art and add a transparent gradient, probably a black or dark brown, near the top of the illustration. It should be darker at the top and lighter toward the bottom. This will make the top of the page darker and give the logo more contrast (you could also use a mask and isolate the alien's head, so that the gradient doesn't go over it, but just the background).
3. Follow the instructions above, but go with white or light yellow and lighten the top of the cover.
4. Add a white "glow" around the logo.

You've got a pretty good cover design, but improving the typography would take it to the next level.

NOTE: i've attached two files to show you an extreme example of a cover with a darker region at the top. The first one is really extreme, with the top fading to pitch black (needed to make the back cover text legible). The Christmas cover is more subtle, and to be honest, it looks better printed and online -- the fade is subtle, but it helps the white logo stand out more.

 

You and Head wax are awesome! I appreciate having extra eyes to see this as I work on my comic. :)

Sammagi

Not official pages (dialogue and shading needs  work).

These are sample pages of  my comic series, using sketching, digital, and daz studio in one!

Sammagi

{double post}

sorry.

eugene_lab

Another sample with the shading and lighting effect, feel free to critique. Original render and re-rendered version.

eugene_lab

philebus said:

eugene_lab said:

Trying to work with shading and lighting, feel free to critique.

Hi,

I think the shading on the figure looks good (strong shading that still picks out a bit of detail where it is needed, such as around the clavicals) but the light rays seem to be in the wrong place to my eye. From the figure, I would say that the light should be largely comming from his right but the light rays appear to be coming from behind him. I'm not sure how I would go about presenting light rays from a direction so close to that of the camera - it might be better shown by strong shadows to the figure's left.

Thank you for your input, I totally agree.

eugene_lab

head wax said:

 

thanks wsterdan  :)  and Sammy_jr_mart

Sammy, I agree with the dark layer behind the text.

eugene_lab ​ - pretty good image - I agree with the light source angle - it looks a bit odd at bottom left - top left is fine to my eye

 

 

 

Thank you again for your input, will work on re-doing this render.

mmitchell_houston

Sammy_jr_mart said:

Not official pages (dialogue and shading needs  work).

These are sample pages of  my comic series, using sketching, digital, and daz studio in one!

Pretty good work, especially for a "talky" segment. The coloring in the first panel creates a nice blur -- it has a modern look to it that is appealing. I like the character designs -- they make it easy to tell them apart in long shots. I want to focus on your lettering, though. The biggest issue I see is that you are "choking" your lettering and your art. By this I mean that your word balloons are a little too small -- the text is crowded. Additionally, most of your word balloons are too close to the speaker's head. Finally, and this is an aesthetic consideration on your part, but I do suggest you consider whether or not the balloons need to stay inside the panels, or if they can go outside the panel border sometimes.

I hope it's okay, but I took the liberty to do a 15-min mock-up showing some changes I'm suggesting to the balloon placement and size. For the first page, I did a quick butcher job and moved the balloons around. For page two, I just indicated the move (or increasing the balloon size) with pink highlights. I also added some yellow to the caption over the map. HOWEVER... if the guy with glasses is speaking, then you'd really be better off with just another word balloon coming from him... or if you like it as is, you should add some quotation marks around the text.

Anyway, I do like where this is headed, but I definitely think the lettering needs to be beefed up. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing more.

 

mmitchell_houston

eugene_lab said:

Another sample with the shading and lighting effect, feel free to critique. Original render and re-rendered version.

This is a nice piece of work. The hair is particularly pleasing. I'm not thrilled with the eyebrows, though, and perhaps you should try running one of the Topaz filters on her skin and top to create a flatter color that would be more "comic-like," as that seems to be the look you're going for. All in all, though, this is pretty darned good. A few more tweaks and I think you'll really be on to something.

mmitchell_houston

Sorry for a duplicate post, guys. Guess I'll just mention that I've been a little quiet lately because I had to have a procedure done to my left knee and it took a little longer than anticipated to recover. As such, much of last week was spent with my leg elevated in my recliner with ice on it to try to bring the swelling down. As such, I could only spend about an hour a day on my computer, and that just didn't leave me much time for art or commenting here. I'm on the mend now, though, so things should be returniing to normal soon.

mmitchell_houston

Sammy_jr_mart said:

Cover for issue 3. I'm redoing the second one to make it fit with the plot and story premise.

I did a quick mock-up of what I meant about adding a lighter blend to the top of the cover. I made no other changes to your logo colors, just the background.

And here's another version with the lighter top blend, but also with a change to the logo color. Comic books change logo colors all the time so they will compliment the artwork. I really think that's something you should consider.

Sorry these are so sloppy, but I was working pretty fast and loose to whip these up.

algovincian

Whoa - great to see so much activity in this thread (especially all of the more finished work being posted). Makes me want to get off me arse and do something official . . . almost . . . lol.

Still waiting for webGL to be supported better on mobiles before I dive in using Panoply/Unity. For now I'll just settle for playing with some new goodies I picked up:

Was worried about how the simplification algorithms would handle that hair at this scale, but was pleasantly surprised. Don't care for the shadow on her hand or the line on her upper lip, but those things can be fixed easy enough by changing the lighting slightly and running it again. Left her default Iray mats applied when I ran the script, too. The shader conversion/application seems to have gone ok, though I do wish her skin were darker.

- Greg

 

jakiblue

oh Head Wax! how did you do the Phantom costume??? My hubby is a massive Phantom fan and I've always wanted to do one for him, but I can't get the Phantom costume right!! 

head wax said:

This is on the famous Nobbys break wall that surrounds our City's harbour entrance. The Red thing is a local icon and ships' beacon.

I left space for Text top left but refrained.

Carrara Job. Filter Forge filters ad infinitum

Any suggestions on Phantom Comic cover text welcome (not the title The Phantom- I'v sorted that one :) )

 

 

 

jakiblue

I had a play with PhotoDonut the other day - I think @divamakeup mentioned it so I thought I'd give it a try. This was my first attempt. Click for full view. 

Original:

Photodonut:

 

 

 

Atanacius

@algovincian : Is this a product you'll releasing at shop soon as a Shader (Iray/3Delight ?) for we can play with ? I ask that due to your render presented from the Monique 8 thread from I came linked to this thread of yours :D

david_macrae

Nightgaunt - storyboard frame from upcoming animation 

david_macrae

Pulp book cover for fun