Well I finished this week's character design challenge & it's barely Wednesday! Usually I'm rushing to get these in at the last second, but this one was so much fun I couldn't take myself away from it.
Here is the final image. I'm pretty damn happy with it. Couple things off as always, but again, I still feel I'm improving, & that's enough to keep me satisfied.
Name: General Iron Nuts
Age: Unknown
Weaknesses: None
Special Move: Iron Teabag of Death
I went nuts with some of the new features in TBS 4.0. Feathered edges in particular. I've gotta say I'm a huge fan! Something I discovered while playing with them was that you can go outside the set parameters of the # of steps and their width. TBS says the width can be between 5-100, and the # of steps can be 3-30. I actually can't say I tested all boundaries, but I know you can drop the width all the way down to 1. I got some really nice results with the settings on 1 width & 3 steps. It gave the drawing a lot of depth and also added a more painterly feel I think.
Here is an example using General Iron Nut's face. The first one is exactly as drawn, and the second is with feathered edges applied to thew whole thing, using the settings I mentioned above. I used that one for the final image.
I like both, but the feathered edges really add a lot to me. It's not a huge difference, but the subtle softening of the fur on his "cheeks" makes for a greater sense of depth, and it adds a little irregularity, which is also good. I've been trying to get away from putting hard black outlines around everything. It works sometimes, but more often than not I think it makes my work look flat & 2D. Not outlining everything in black was already helping, and I'm finding that using just the right settings with feathered edges can really add a lot to my drawings as well!
I plan on posting more soon about some the uses for new features in TBS. I have one in the works already that involves using feathered edges increasingly over time to aid in the effects of acceleration & speed. With a looping background it can be quite easy to make someone run/ride/drive from zero to light speed in no time!
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
General Iron Nuts - And some TBS 4 talk
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3 comments:
I wouldn't want to meet old iron nuts in dark forest or have him crawl up into the attic of my house for the winter -LoL- Nice job of scaring the oatmeal out of all the little kiddies on Saturday mornings, Pat. Next you should do "Rambo the Raccoon". They would have one kick "A" of a fight in the woods for sure.
(fixed a typo, sorry)
heheh :) I had a blast with this one, it was really fun to draw this character for some reason. I don't remember the name of the episode, but I tried to base him on Jerry in one episode of Tom & Jerry where Jerry is drinking Tom's milk & Tom poisons it. The outcome of course is that it doesn't kill Jerry but turns him into a muscle bound monster mouse who throws Tom around like a rag-doll! I always loved that episode & I just had to change "mouse" to "squirrel" & add a few accessories to make this character.
My latest idea involves my pirate self & a crew of anthro-critters, so old Iron Nuts(or something close) may be reappearing again sometime soon. Glad to hear you liked him though, thanks for your words. :)
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