147 replies to this topic

[Enkida]

So here, a bit more gentle w. the saturation:



Also, that means Elisha Cuthbert will be Suna Seni instead of Sime.

Edited by Enkida, 27 November 2011 - 01:52 PM.

[MiLeah]

Ah, very nice! I'm saving this one.

Though, you got me totally stumped on how you draw the clothes and hair. I am so amazed on how you draw/paint over it and just make it all blend together, very nice! If you don't mind me askin', what method do you use for making your clothes and hair.

Edited by MiLeah, 27 November 2011 - 02:50 PM.

[Enkida]

Ah, very nice! I'm saving this one.

Though, you got me totally stumped on how you draw the clothes and hair. I am so amazed on how you draw/paint over it and just make it all blend together, very nice! If you don't mind me askin', what method do you use for making your clothes and hair.

A VERY THIN BRUSH! XD

No, actually. What I usually do is collage - I spend hours and hours going through images looking for an outfit that fits, even if it's in black and white or hand drawn. If the photo is too small and pixellated or in the wrong "shape" for the portrait - most times it is - then I port it in anyway, skew and distort and scale and perspective filter it until it looks at least kind of right, and then I use that as a "drawing template." THEN I use a very thin hard edge photoshop round brush. Usually 1 to 3 pixels for hair fixes, 3 to 5 pixels for clothing fixes, and never really above 13 pixels for blocking in straight colour. Cutting half of an ok piece and mirroring it also saves my bacon a lot of times, too.

I also collage a lot of default Bioware artwork pieces. You can pull out the strangest things and reuse them in ways the original artists never intended - Cernd's little bit of green armour as mage robes or a samurai costume, Aerie's armour jewel as a tank top, Sarevok's platemail as a female chainmail, bits of the default orc portrait as a leathermail, Anomen's high collar as monk robes, to name a few I've done already. Mazzy, Cernd and the orc portrait armours are one of the easiest to take component pieces out of and reuse in all kinds of funky ways. BG1 portraits are also excellent for stealing component pieces from. I collage until I'm happy, and if it doesn't fit, then I hand paint over it.

Never forget to put in the shadows (I do it with the burn tool) when you collage or it just looks funny. Blurring the edges a bit also helps a ton, and makes paint masking a lot easier, too. Sometimes I paint with the burn and dodge tools rather than paint, rather than going in and picking a new colour for a complicated piece, too.

For generally giving clothing or faces a painterly feel, I make a copy of the layer and run it through the Pshop artistic filter "paint daubs" (I use CS1, dinosaur that I am) - usually the simple brush or the wide blurry brush. I either do not sharpen at all or sharpen only one or two ticks, but I make the brush size anything from 1 to 3 tics large. Once that's done, I go in and hand-erase the edges and important details that I need to be sharp, and what's left in the places I didn't looks "painted." Again, if I spot obvious errors or problems, I go in and paint and blend, blend blend.

The opacity tool is also a huge friend of mine when painting and blending!

Finally, when everything is done, I usually run a saturation check over everything to make sure the colours are at least in the same saturation range. Just make a layer above your entire picture, fill it with some block colour, and change the filter to saturation. Then inspect what pops out from the rest of the picture. If it looks funky, you have a saturation problem and you have to go in and fix the components until they don't pop out under the saturation check. When you're done, throw away the saturation layer.

Finally, with the head attached to the clothes, and the background in place, I make another layer, usually hue or colour, and fill it with something neutralish - a brown or a mild blue or purple, depending on the tone I want the picture to have - and then change that layer property to hue or colour. Then I put the opacity way down, to anything between 1 and 20%. This sort of forces the entire colour scheme of the clothing and the skin to "blend" artificially without any work on my part. If something blends a little too well - a blonde becomes a brunette, for example - then I go in and with a very soft brush erase the most important highlites from the hue or colour layer to bring back a bit of the original tone.

That's pretty much my method, I've been learning as I go though. Every picture is a new learning process for me, it seems.

*also, I'm updating the WIP Kachiko post with new images as I go, so you can kind of see me doing it step by step there. Sorta. She needs a LOT of painting, since her base image body was in the completely wrong perspective for a BG portrait, and she had the wrong hair to boot!

Edited by Enkida, 27 November 2011 - 03:13 PM.

[MiLeah]

That's pretty much my method, I've been learning as I go though. Every picture is a new learning process for me, it seems.

^ This all the way! This just about sums me up as well.
Wow, okay, you do so much more then I do, lol. But it works for you! Or maybe it just sounds like a lot...I'm gonna test out a few things that you named and see if it works for me.

*also, I'm updating the WIP Kachiko post with new images as I go, so you can kind of see me doing it step by step there. Sorta. She needs a LOT of painting, since her base image body was in the completely wrong perspective for a BG portrait, and she had the wrong hair to boot!

Oooo! I'll be looking forward to this! I love watching transformation of pictures!

[Enkida]

Alright, here she is done. Check out page 4 of this thread for WIP to get her here:

Kachiko from the Tortured Souls mod:

[Miloch]

I don't know if this one is actually an improvement, but I took a stab at imoen's hair, too.

This is pretty good if you can do something about the outlines which look a bit too fuzzy. (Maybe you have - didn't have time to go through all 9 pages ). Some of the other ones are good too, but some look a bit too photo-real. Probably the original portraits were that way, but you should try to "baldurise" them. Amaurea posted a PaintShop script that did a pretty good job at that - no clue where it is these days, probably buried in some thread here. Also, some portraits appear to have JPEG artifacts. There are some tools that can de-jpeg images, but obviously you don't want to work with .jpg because it sucks (due to compression).

[Lava Del'Vortel]

Isn't Kachiko's head a bit too big? Compare it to Imoen.

[Enkida]

Thanks Miloch! *does happy dance* That means this pack is almost done, and I can get back to what I want to do, which is actually play my game!

I've been looking at the Bodhi default portrait, and I actually don't want to mess with it on further consideration, though I strongly suspect if she has a medium or large size portrait, it's a full body and not just a head shot, which would bug me. But there's no way to get a bigger version of the original image, so that's that. I would still like to replace the CG Irenicus portrait used in game with the Irenicus artwork used in the official wallpaper, but I wouldn't even know where to look for that file. We'll see...

On Kachiko's head...hmm, it is a bit big. It'll be a bit of effort to shrink it, as I may have to paint in some more armour. Perhaps in return ffor the fix you could spend a little time making the preparation and packaging of this portrait pack easier for me. A fair trade, since I don't play that mod, no?

[Lava Del'Vortel]

I know it may be a bit problematic... maybe it would look better if she had wider neck or something...?

And I can help you with the filenames etc, but not today. I just came back home from work and I'm exhausted...

[Enkida]

Nikita from open beta. This is Petra Wilson, as in the photo I was given to work from. It was too low res for a portrait so a lot of this is hand painted ^^;

[MiLeah]

Oh, wow very, very nice! She too fits perfectly into the robe!~

[Enkida]

Thanks! She doesn't, but I cut the robe to fit her. Psst!

I have been struggling with myself whether or not to do a lore correct version of Minsc (swarthy skinned, non-tattooed, hairy) + Clifette's UB mod Minsc portraits. Miloch did half of that already, but I'm not a big fan of the hair he did. But part of me is struggling with the gut reaction of "But it's MINSC! You don't mess with MINSC!" On the fence about it, because I do so love lore correctness, and Dynaheir was done properly. And I am not getting the urge to shave and tattoo Edwin, either, for that matter. Hmm... maybe it can't hurt to try. ^^;

[Enkida]

IDK, but he is lore corrected at least. Maybe someone will want to use him. I will go ahead and match the booless pic from Clifette's mod if that's the case, too. We wouldn't want Minsc turning white and loosing all his hair over the loss of Boo, now would we? ;-)

[Enkida]

For the Unfinished Business mod. I think I have to do a portrait with a recoloured boo for this one too actually.

[Enkida]

Second for UB mod:

[Enkida]

Just a quick heads up, the "Elvira" portrait (I think from the Edwin Romance mod, though not sure) had a perfectly well sized large version in the override folder. It was just her small portrait that was poorly cropped. So that is done, but doesn't need a reposting here.

[Enkida]

Kachiko's head resized

[Sanctifer]

Yeah, she looks better !
I have a little suggestion though : shouldn't her head be a little more like this ?



(a little more "vertical", note sure how to explain it, that's why I made an example ^^ )

Or maybe it was on purpose ?

Edited by Sanctifer, 01 December 2011 - 05:07 AM.

[Dakk]

I really like the "lore-corrected" () Minsc! I'd definitely use that portrait - but if I could request one thing it would that the scars be changed somewhat. They are more or less in the same place on the face, and look very much the same. It's too symmetrical, so to speak - like he was raked with a very wide fork...

Edited by Dakk, 01 December 2011 - 11:20 AM.

[Enkida]

Kachiko: will edit later, i think i need to paint in more armour and center her head in the frame, not just detilt tho that was intentional at first. cropping prob with smaller head still exists either way though

Minsc: that was his default artwork scars! but miloch takes request, once we are done trading files you can ask him for variants I bet

will be a bit of time before I can edit more, xmas decorations around my house need to go up and that is a 2 day job that eats from my photomanip time ;-)