Ji's Open Canvas Thread

I found it off Basil and thought it looked good. Apparently, it's one of the murals in one of Nexon's offices.

Figures. Gah, want.

Ji, could you please draw this without the Nexon sign?

 Spoiler

:f2:

haro, haha, wish i could but am sure i would struggle!! tagging art is still confusingly talent-requiring, in my mind.

ditownsyou - glad you liked it. took much longer than anything else because of its size, it actually lagged the tablet a lot more than expected!

have always wanted to draw jiiiiiiii (the maple character). had a really clear template for the head (of course!) but maple chars are caricatured so had to invent the body in my own style... so inconsistent and out of proportion. how to improve the body shape?

 ji

wedding theme again.
this is actually ji's first tailored balldress rather than her actual wedding dress. but she will really have oriental lilies in her bouquet.

 ji's head alone

 reference

aah trying to avoid double posting .. and failed.

here is a random big unlikely rock
yes, i am very silly and procrastinate a lot. yay



purposeless rock. made mira's name out of it and that is all really... this is not an attempt to copy Genki's style (:

Ji, I love all of your work. =D

Please please continue! I have noticed you are trying to mimic Genki's style. My recommendations for you would be:
1) Try incorporating different line weights, textures ... opacity is one thing but textures and weights are completely different. I see you playing with opacity but not so much these other available options.
2) There is a free program called OpenCanvas 1.1. It may be tricky to find--OpenCanvas is on it's fourth or fifth version now. However, it looks to me (based on my experiences) that Genki is using a program more like this. The "Watercolor" tool in OpenCanvas 1.1 seems to be very similar to what she is doing. Photoshop/Painter CAN mimic this sort of style but it's a lot easier with OC 1.1. Try a google search, I'm sure it's still hiding somewhere on the Internet. It's a very small file...only a couple megabytes...but it is wonderful.

Edited to add: Genki also doesn't really seem to airbrush blend colors. She uses hard brushes (from what I've seen) and just blocks in different color.

Just my 2 cents.

Keep doing what you do, you are fantastic!

aah trying to avoid double posting .. and failed.

here is a random big unlikely rock
yes, i am very silly and procrastinate a lot. yay

 Spoiler

purposeless rock. made mira's name out of it and that is all really... this is not an attempt to copy Genki's style (:

Wow, that's an epic rock. I don't see Mira's name anywhere though. >_>

thanks venison! line weights, textures. must remember that. think i was looking at her older style and thinking of opacity, and then using her new ones to try and "get it" and forgetting the other things she had begun to put in later on, as you mentioned - much appreciated!! i miss these things easily!

re: opencanvas mmm. am definitely looking for a program with more lineart capabilities than just raster + pressure sensitivity (+ ink tool - recent discovery heh). i have trawled through a lot of genki's DA art and she says she uses SAI - that is, paint tool SAI, which has amazing lineart support! however is also proprietary. will definitely hunt out opencanvas.

i think i am still stuck in realism when i tend to airbrush and smudge things. am scared of hard edges and it is a challenge to not use at least 20 layers per piece. every time i see a hard edge i want to blend it with something, heh. definitely something to work on..

for now, some non-people random things (in absence of tablet).



(textures from cgtextures.com)

harrison - here is mira from the rock.

aahh doublepost!

Attempt #5 Genki style, based on this piece.



not satisfied with background but it'll do.
- throws mentioned doing lineart, so i tried to do lineart. didn't work spent hours in sai and gimp trying to draw something useful but ended up painting in the end.
- hard edges (minimal blending)
- what genki describes as "high saturation" colours! i am very unfamiliar with this, but it was fun trying it out

Ahh, Paint Tool SAI. A wonderful program. When I first tried it, it reminded me a LOT of OC...but better, because it responded more nicely. It does have the smoothest inking in the universe (assuming you don't have shaky hands like me...I just have to draw really slow!). I used the trial for the month long period and fell in love but unfortunately I already have more than enough programs (OC1.1, PS, Painter X... my beloved Oekaki...).

I think you're getting a bit closer to what you want. Lineart can be frustrating, I understand.

And I totally see the higher saturation thing. Gives your image a brighter look vs. using unsaturated colors when it looks duller. I can see how Genki utilizes this to her advantage...her pictures are always so bright and cute.

You did this wonderfully in your new pic, I think you are getting the idea quite well, for someone unfamiliar with it. I still haven't figured this out...I'm color-dumb. I tend to desaturate and my people always end up with funky skintones with ugly purplish shading. Haha. Now that you mention it, I'm going to work on that...

=) Keep going! You are inspiring me. ;D

aahh doublepost!


Attempt #5 Genki style, based on this piece.

I still have this real odd thing when I look her nose... them nostrils seem like... a lil bit darker and deeper than they should. But that's just me. However, very nice attempt in improving lineart, you are definitely improving a lot! Keep it up.


I'm more of a musician but I love finding some inspiration in you and Throws. =).

venison - thanks heaps. decided to try out SAI for real this time, realising i am also falling in love with it! a wip to test out SAI: (started out a copy of Genki's style in Corsola piece, but of course didn't succeed)



lol white layers. also, the face is not satisfactory... i guess because of attempting vectors and saturation at once heh. possibly improved with shading... but yay SAI lineart! i am very impressed with the behaviour of brushes too, didn't know what hit me when i started blending markers!

what i might do is keep the program after it expires, keep doing lineart in it, then copy to GIMP... (: heh, either that or 5250 yen..

what is oekaki? i see tutorials for it on DA, is it a colouring program or something?

rob - thanks, waiting for some music from you! will always have problems with noses i think! i ought to study a nose sometime or something.

edit:
added another one. exploring another style, genki was on the back burner.

Oekaki is a java application that is embedded into websites. It's got it's own unique qualities, like a cool water color tool, but there's a slight learning curve for it.

I think the main oekaki site I can think of right now is oekakicentral.com, but it looks like they are down. I use http://www.sailor-games.com/oekaki/drawing.php. I've gone there for nearly six years, but it's a very slow board... If you want go try it out, it's a fun program and easy to use and free and doesn't require installing anything (except maybe a java applet). The only downside is to get it to recognize pen tablet pressure you have to jump through some java hoops (install some java driver) but...yeah.

I really like both of those pictures, the colors are exquisite. =D

You're kind of good. Never was much into that type of drawing style tho (:

venison - wow. yes, i found a lot of "oekaki boards" ever since your first comment about oekaki but never figured out how to get to the actual drawing part.. have clicked the "paint" button at long last and found the actual applet! ah, silly me.

some quite advanced effects here, wonder why it takes so much effort for GIMP to render some of these! (like mosaic for example). the watercolour effect is very nice indeed. the first time i saw this effect was in sai, and still haven't figured out what the algorithm for that is, as it seems unpredictable (but still very useful...)... in that oekaki applet it seemed very responsive to the cursor, i like, heh

(am sure there is more than just the watercolour tool, heh.)

thanks for giving me yet another pretty thing to play with

q9r42 - am not that good, ideas just come into my head and i obsess over them, to the detriment of everything else. its interesting what you said, am actually exploring a lot of unfamiliar styles at the moment, so all the recent ones have been "not my usual style"! which one were you talking about? and what is your preferred style?

almost wanted to post another thread but trying to restrain myself.
so:

 a wip for fun

part of the "big canvas"
aiptek tablet+sai (no GIMP!)

still haven't finished the snake's patterns yet... i have no reference so am still figuring out what snakes are supposed to look like :/ any help appreciated !!

Ji, I really like the snake. 8D I found some resources for you on sxc.hu, the yseem like they could make good references for patterns (though they are all facing differently from yours).

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/843555
http://www.sxc.hu/photo/797993
http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1145028

Good luck. =)

wow, thank you so much venison!! magic. i used the second image i think - ended up not finishing the snake because i struggled with the scales on the head for about 4 hours and gave up on the rest. and i finally submitted to the contest too.

finally!



linked the original page on DA (: at last .. now for homework, rofl.

Whoa, that's amazing.

Ji, that's beautiful. I don't know what it is but you make such realistic objects. A wonderful piece. =)

thanks guys glad you like it, spent a disproportionate amount of time on it, heh. don't think itll win though, too many other good pieces out there.

some random stuff inspired by the "elf" thread in the funhouse

- thoughts for improving realism? didn't use a reference and yeah the whites of the eyes aren't white heh

[spoiler=Ji's post.]thanks guys glad you like it, spent a disproportionate amount of time on it, heh. don't think itll win though, too many other good pieces out there.

some random stuff inspired by the "elf" thread in the funhouse

- thoughts for improving realism? didn't use a reference and yeah the whites of the eyes aren't white heh

[/spoiler]

Awesome work again.

I think that the girl could be improved by reducing a bit the size of the eyes and the nose, making her more natural and not so animu style.... Probably just me and my weird view of aesthetics.

ah, always seem to have the issue of anime eyes. thanks rob!!.

used a reference, loosely, for the next one:

working on an interpretation of luthien tinuviel, morning star of the elves (ancestor of arwen, who is called evenstar)

an explanation from wikipedia:

She is described as the Morning Star of the Elves, a term meaning that she was the most beautiful of all her people at the height of their glory, In contrast, Luthien's descendant Arwen is called Evenstar, the Evening Star of the Elves, meaning that in her the beauty of Lúthien Tinúviel and the great Elvish Princesses of old have appeared on Middle-earth for the final time, and will never again appear after her.

wip