Tag: drawing

How to move art to a new layer in Photoshop

Have you ever been working and then realized you’ve been working on the wrong layer? Of course you have. We’ve all done it. But if you just copy and paste it, by default Photoshop drops the art in the middle of the window, which is… not very good.

Here’s how to move copy & paste it without it moving.

I’m using a render of my DnD character (that I’m using to draw them properly in Manga Studio).

The sad way it used to work…

Select the art work and cut it (CTRL-X on Windows). Now you’re going to ‘paste it in place’. Under the Edit menu, it’s Paste Special > Paste in Place, or Shift+CTRL+V.

The happy good way!

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Sick – No post today

This doesn’t count. I’ve got a cold and my brain isn’t working, so don’t expect posts for a bit.

Last week I had an overwhelming urge to draw The Shadow in my Silver’s Kids style. You can consider this a preview of when I start doing those write-ups.

the-shadow-silvers-kids-style

I stole the pose from this issue:

shadow_193112

Theoretically I could ink and color it, but I probably won’t.

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30 Characters Challenge #7 – Lee DeLoreo

Here’s the last of my entries for the 30 Characters Challenge.

Name: Lee DeLoreo
Hair Color: Ash-blond (with red dyed stripes)
Eye Color: Grey
Skin tone: Pale

Lee DeLoreo is the events organizer for several charities, including the Friends of the Greyhound. He has the annoying tendency to name drop, usually unnecessarily, but all the publicity he gathers is for charity.

DeLoreo is a minor character for my comic series, The White Knight, but may show up more than I planned since the main character does a lot of charity work.

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30 Characters Challenge #6 – Gimmick

Name: Aaron McKay, aka Gimmick
Hair Color: Reddish-brown
Eye Color: Grey
Skin Tone: Reddish-Brown

Gimmick is one of the more subtle Name Criminals and a great deal of his fame is self-promotion and bragging. He’s a classic bully and narcissist, and somewhat of a loner, choosing to spend time with very few people. He has no real friends, but the people he spends the most time with are those that can compete with him intellectually, like Techrat, or that will flatter him, like Jill. He’s intimidated by many of the other more dangerous Name Criminals and tries not to show it by upping his bragging.

He’s usually hired by another criminal to plan jobs for them, and uses a different gimmick for each client. He’s liable to spend more money to do the crime than it brings in, but since it’s all for show for him he doesn’t care.

He has profound hearing loss from childhood and wears very discreet hearing aids of his own design. He makes a fair amount of money off the patents for them. He also wears glasses for reading. He has multiple sclerosis and finds the flare-ups very frustrating, and smokes both tobacco and marijuana. He won’t admit how badly he’s addicted to cigarettes, but he comes close to chain-smoking when frustrated, nervous, or bored.

Gimmick is a villain for my comic series, The White Knight. He’s half black, half the local equivalent to Native American (the world the story is set on has no America.)

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30 Characters Challenge #5 – Swordcat

Name: Leon Smith / Lenxoli, aka Swordcat
Hair Color: Red
Eye Color: Yellow
Skin Tone (fur): Gold

Leon Smith was a fairly ordinary man. Divorced with shared custody of his daughter, Melinda. He preferred to spend his time camping, hiking, and fishing, well away from people. It was on a camping trip that he found a strange sword in the debris from a recent landslide. He made the mistake of picking it up and found it had a personality of its own, Lenxoli.

Lenxoli had gone somewhat mad after the destruction of its home planet, floating in space for countless eons, and laying buried on Earth for millions of years. It wants nothing more in the universe than to recreate the civilization it came from. The first two steps, in whatever order necessary, are to destroy the hairless beasts and uplift the felines, the creatures that are most like its makers.

It meant to completely overwrite Leon’s mind, but didn’t quite succeed. An unexpected side effect was for Leon to change from a grumpy misanthropist to someone who wanted nothing more than back scratches, good food, and a nap in a sunny space.

The sword itself grows  from dagger size to full-length sword. (The two swords as drawn are in scale to each other, I believe). Lenxoli’s mind is connected to the sword which is usually kept in the mental institution freezer, which helps quiet Lenxoli. The staff otherwise find Leon quite pleasant to deal with, especially compared to many of the other inmates.

Swordcat is a villain for my comic series, The White Knight.

I was trying to find a way to make him look fuzzy without having to draw lots and lots of hair, because I’m don’t draw that fast and I need ways to get out pages of the comic (when I make it) without each page taking forever. I use Manga Studio. With Swordcat I tried using the Brush Pen which has a little bit of texture for his skin. It showed up better in the giant version (duh, I know). It wasn’t a successful method from the time saving stand point either, because to preserve the texture I had to paint in all the blacks – without completely blacking them in – instead of using the Fill tool. Oh well, I had fun.

The swords on the bottom were drawn several years ago, which is why they’re shaded. I’m trying to get away from that shading style because, again, it takes too long. And, yes, the eye on his back is correct. It shifts to stay upright. And it’s watching you.

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30 Characters Challenge #3 – Vermilion / Ronnie Boyd

Vermilion

Real name: Donald Boyd Jr. Goes by Ronnie.

Hair color: Black

Eye color: Brown

Skin tone: African American

Ronnie heals twice as fast as normal with no scarring. Aside from that, his supersuit makes him nearly invulnerable. He was given an old, worthless but pretty blanket by his archeologist uncle. When he wrapped himself in it, it transformed to a rubber-like suit that acts as a second skin. He added boots, a belt with pouch that holds essentials, and goggles with night-vision capabilities.

Ronnie is from a so-far untitled superhero romance I started in October. No idea when it’ll be finished, but one other character from it will be showing up for this. It’s been kind of frustrating, as my friends have heard, because I’m not going to do anything major with the story – I might put it up on the web somewhere, but that’ll be it. And yet it wouldn’t leave me alone when I should have been preparing for NaNoWriMo.

The images were made in Poser 7, using Michael 4, the free Nadino Mask, various other props, and a custom texture for the suit. Which isn’t perfect, but I ran out of patience to fiddle with it.

 

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Link Dump

I would post another chapter of ‘Ostanes’ except I had a stupid moment (they’re unfortunately not uncommon, but usually small) and left the thumbdrive with it at home. I may post it later today, since I finally have internet at home.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about doing a link dump, and then I saw the first thing and HAD to share it.

  • House with Bird Feet (from Tea with the Squash God). The start of a story from Ursula Vernon. As you may guess from the title, it’s got Baba Yaga. “If you’ve ever wondered how I write a thing (and lord, why would you?) the answer is that I sit down and write something like this one afternoon, and then I shove it into a metaphorical drawer and see if it ever bothers me again.” (This is about how I end up writing as well, except I tend not to write them down until they’ve been bugging me for a while.)
  • 19 Old-Timey Slang Terms to Bolster Your Vocabulary (from MentalFloss). I tend to find the lists there lackluster, but this one has good things like zib and John Hollowlegs.
  • Forest Tutorial (from the ConceptArt.org Forums). Basic, but useful. I imagine it would well for any sort of background as well, like cityscapes. The ‘duh! Why didn’t I think of that?!’ moment for me was ‘start from the back’.
  • Varying Your Body Types (from Fritter and Waste). Has naked female model, so probably NSFW. Personally, I’m good about not having all my women (or men) look the same, but this has some points I hadn’t thought about and it’s really well illustrated.
  • Vum (from Languagehat). Just a fun word from a language blog I like.

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