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TopGull — And They Were Never Heard From Again
Published: 2013-08-26 05:05:50 +0000 UTC; Views: 2707; Favourites: 54; Downloads: 21
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ATG3 Day 10 - Draw a pony from legend/draw a pony with a story! #250Holey moley, this one got out of hand quickly. It was only supposed to be a quick sketch of RD, then I penciled in the log she's sitting on, then a quick doodle of the fire, then what the heck let's add trees in the background and make it full color and try some smoke and ... and...and.......
There were three major inspirations for this piece. For the scene, it was the episode "Sleepless in Ponyville", which is one of my all time favorites. RD's line is classic campfire horror, of course, but it's also my favorite "game over" line in any RPG ever, coming from the Tales series. Lastly, RD's sneer is based on Light Yagami's "just as planned" face (If you're not familiar with it, check it out here . Deliciously evil.)
So yeah, this turned out to be HIGHLY experimental. I'll take comments on pretty much any part of it, so please let me know what worked and what didn't.
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Comments: 15
The posing of the wings are superb. I mean, those things are hard to work with. Seriously, props.
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Hurray, you're using colour and shadows! I'm so proud of you!
If I may offer some advice, usually fire light is extremely harsh: tinted orange/yellow where the light hits and extremely dark shadows where it does not, with little in the middle. I think you could have deepened your shadows a lot more, especially in the background. Don't be afraid of really dark shadows! They're fine if used in the right situations.
I love the posing and composition though! Also, that texture on the flame is pretty sweet. How'd you do that? Bristle brush? And I'm always jealous of how expressive your faces are. Great job!
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Awesome, I was really hoping I'd get a comment from you! I hear what you're saying about the shadows, and I'm going to talk to my therapist about it before I head off to my acting workshop
Seriously, though, I absolutely agree with you on the background shadows. I was super rushed through this whole piece, and ended up doing the background gradients and trees on the same layer for some reason. By the time I realized the gradient was too light, I already had the first row of trees done and didn't have any quick way to fix it, so I just kind of plowed on thinking it was a foggy night with a full moon or something. For the highlights, I tried out an airbrush on a 'Divide" layer. I definitely would like to play around with it more to really get a feel for how it affects color, and I'll keep that advice about firelight in mind.
I don't remember exactly, but for the fire I'm pretty sure I just used a basic round brush with pressure mapped to opacity. I did one pass around the edge with red, then a bunch of light, quick strokes from the center with yellow, and went over the whole thing with an airbrush set to divide. As for my faces, I got a "How to Draw Manga" book several years ago (that I read all the way through but didn't practice much) that said to make sure you get the face right before you move on to the rest of the body, because if the face is bad, nothing else in the picture can make up for it (or something like that). And for the most part, I've found it to be true. I think I spend more time working on faces than on any other single part of my drawings.
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"Divide"? I'm not sure that I recognize that layer setting. What program are you using? Also, roughly speaking, what does divide do?
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I'm on a Mac and I'm too cheap for Photoshop, so I'm using GIMP. Roughly speaking, it's the inverse of the Multiply setting, making the image brighter. Light colors have little effect, and dark colors have a strong effect. From the GIMP docs:
"Divide mode multiplies each pixel value in the lower layer by 256 and then divides that by the corresponding pixel value of the upper layer plus one. (Adding one to the denominator avoids dividing by zero.) The resulting image is often lighter, and sometimes looks 'burned out'."
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Hmm, interesting. Thanks for the description!
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oh boy, don't I ever know how these little sketches can get out of hand.
this came out really well - it feels very polished. This was one of my favorite episodes as well :3
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Very nice, I love how it's inspired from Sleepless in Ponyville's concept.
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That reminds me when I made up a scary story on the fly in front of other kids. Predictably, I forgot it very quickly.
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OOoooooh that eerie shadowing! Great piece.
Don't know if this was intentional, but the speech bubble and text kind of blend into the background...I didn't notice it at first.
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Thanks! The transparency in the speech bubble was intentional. I thought it might make it a bit more creepy (and I didn't want to cover up all the detail I had already put into that forest!) What do you think? Good move? Bad move?
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In the end it's your decision, but I personally think it would have been a little creepier if it had stood out.
It's hard to explain, but it has to do with how I hear the characters voices...
Really great piece, though! I enjoy seeing your submissions!
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It gives a very ghosty feel. I like it.
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