I've only had access to a personal, working copy of PS for 2 1/2 months at this point. While I've poked friends for pointers, read tutorials on concepts I needed, looked at other works for reverse-engineering, and otherwise just bumbled through and learned on my own, there's still a level of uncertainty that goes into my work, and I think its what takes me so long to get things worked out (have to do then redo then reredo sometimes to get it right
). I feel I've improved greatly and it doesn't scare or frustrate me like it used to, but there's some insight I feel could be really helpful. I thought that a place for us to ask questions and get responses would be very handy ^_^
So, for those of you who are experienced in these ways, feel free to impart wisdom on lowly noobs so that we may be able to produce works of quality for all to enjoy.
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For my personal inquiries, I have a few. I have CS3 Extended and Corel Painter Essentials 2 (it was cheap-as-free). I've saved up for a Cintiq and might be able to get Painter X cheap with it when I order in a couple weeks. I've only dabbled lightly in my Painter Essentials, though plan to do some experimenting sometime soon.
Anyways...
1.) How do you approach digital inking (if you do it this way)? I know some paint with the brush and others use the vector tool, and also that a lot of it is just practice and hand-skills. So I'm wondering... how do you separate your inking layers, if at all? What shapes of brushes do you use? -- I've made a selection of long, flat ellipse brushes that I thought improved things considerably, but experienced reflection is nice ^_^ Also, do you lightly 'sketch' in the lines, then expand and touch up later, or do you go for perfection and detail on each line as you make them?
For an added bit, I've noticed many artists make the lines surrounding specific portions be a darker shade the general colors contained within. Whats a good approach to that? My personal attempt was using a 'Color Overlay' on the lines with the Layer Options. Any other concepts would be great ^_^
2.) How do you approach shading/highlighting? Or more specifically, what kinds of brushes/techniques/effects (if any) do you use? Cell shading is simple enough but any other ideas or insights are welcomed.
3.) Clean up! I've sometimes found myself chasing down little rogue bits here and there, and I was wondering if there are any quick-and-dirty tricks to handling it effectively.
And of course, any other quick-and-dirty tricks for anything else at all that you use ^_^ I don't try to be lazy but anything that can reduce tedium to any degree would be awesome.
And, of course, thank you in advance for the help!
