Photoshop, oh Photoshop!

I like Photoshop CS2. I don't even want to look at CS3 yet, but I'm sure that will happen someday. At work, I did this sketch yesterday and kinda finished it up and made it more presentable today. She looks kinda green on my monitor at home, but she looked ok at work....Tyra Banks was the reference photo. Everything but the face was kind of an afterthought and done without any reference....and I think it shows. Oh well, it's just a sketch. It is what it is.

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Quick Photoshop Custom Brush Tutorial

Ok, so you should know that most of the default brushes in Photoshop aren't that great. However, the angled squarish chalk ones are pretty decent.

To make a new brush, you'll first want to start with a new document. I usually just make a 256x256 @ 72 or 150 pixels per inch. Make the background white, and whatever is darker than white will become your brush shape. This is the brush shape I like to use for general painting:

Once you have your brush shape the way you want it, go to Edit > Define Brush Preset. This will make your current document into a brush. Name it whatever you want, and then click "OK".

Select the Brush tool and you will see that you now have your new brush shape. However, the default settings aren't normally what you want on your brush. Open the Brush window under Window > Brushes (F5).

Under Brush Tip Shape, I normally set the spacing setting to 1% unless I'm going for a repeated pattern look. I'll go over one of those brushes some other time. You can play around with the roundness or angle if your initial brush shape isn't looking exactly how you wanted.

Next, I make sure Smoothing is checked at the bottom, and then go into Shape Dynamics. For these features to work effectively, you should have a pressure-sensitive drawing tablet like this. They can be pricey, but are very essential if you plan on being serious about digital artwork. My Wacom Intuos Series 1 has been very reliable, and I have rarely heard of anyone's tablet breaking from wear and tear.

Sorry about that sidetrack...here are my settings for this brush.


Hope this helped. As you can see, creating a custom brush is pretty simple. There are many options and features you can use in each brush, but often you only need a few of them. The trick is just understanding each feature and using the ones you need for the look you want. Simple experimentation of the settings will go a long way.

Up next, more custom brushes with "texture"! I hope this was helpful. As a tease, here are some other brush shapes in my brush palette.

Happy Belated Halloween!

I've been busy. With work, mostly. I did get quite a bit of overtime, so my paycheck this week will be fairly fat! I had to work late on Halloween. At least the kids got to Trick-or-Treat around the office, which they love to do. Miles won the kids costume contest ($12 from Target), but it was slightly embarrassing because the announcer thought he was a girl chicken(?). His $25 Best Buy gift card got Alissa some new headphones. Too bad Alissa has mutant ears and the headphones won't even stay in (earbuds). Seriously, her ear holes are strange. I can't believe I hadn't noticed it before! She should blog about them.

I spent many hours the Sunday before Halloween fabricating Abbie's legendary Turtle Shell out of cardboard and foam paper. I probably got too into it, because I spent all my energy making the shell and then dumped the project on Alissa to finish the rest of the costume. We ended up hot-gluing the chest part directly onto Abbie's green sweatshirt, and looping ribbon around the top of the shell to hold it to Abbie's shoulders. It worked out ok, I think.

Anna's costume was the easiest. Ballerina? Go check the dress-up box. Done! Sadly, Anna's feet were too wide and blocky to fit into the ballerina slippers Alissa found, so she picked up some shoes elsewhere. I was sort of looking forward to what would become of Anna's previously mentioned "Karate Princess" idea for Halloween, but the ballerina outfit was really cute. Even more memorable was the image of Anna the ballerina chowing down caramel apples and food beneath a light at the Halloween party at work. Her skintight leotard showed off a nicely swollen belly, but she was as cute as ever.

Alissa went through the kids candy and pulled out everything she liked. I think that is a little much, as I would rather just keep it all in the same bag and pull out whatever I felt like eating at any given time. I really have to cut back on the chocolate....

On a different note, I will be joining the Concept Art group in a week or so. I am excited to be able to focus on art. The guys on the team are amazing artists, and I will be learning a lot from them. I found a few artists on the Daily Painting Group that really inspired me. I was really blown away by Karin Jurik's work. The Jack-O-Lantern is hers. I must paint! I really wish I had a studio...

I promise to put up some Photoshop tutorials soon. I was going to do it tonight, but I felt like I needed to update my loyal readers on some recent events.

Matte Painting

No, it's not cheating. It's a technique used to create a more realistic image, using a photograph as reference for the natural lightning and mood for the piece. It's commonly known that in an FX shot, it will only be as good as the matte painter assigned to it. Not that I have any experience in it, but that's what my friends in "the Biz" tell me. Anyhow, this was done in Photoshop CS2 in about 2.5 hrs.

Here is my first attempt. Thanks to Ben Cammarano for all the tips! Wish me luck...

2nd image is original plate. 1st image is after I'm all done. Click to view at full size!

Two-Fer

I've been watching season one of 30 Rock using my Netflix "Watch it Now" privileges. It's been fantastic! Granted, they don't have a very wide selection of content, but there are some hidden gems. I highly recommend an indie film called "One Last Thing". The movie description doesn't do the film justice, but read through some of the member reviews. It was a very good film, and not at all what you'd expect from the movie description. It is thoughtful, engaging, and an emotional ride.

Also on the movie front, I took the entire family to see Ratatouille at the dollar theater yesterday. We actually took up an entire row! The movie is fantastic, and delivered a wonderful story and great animation. Abbie commented that the rats in the movie could cook, but the rats in our kitchen couldn't.

Puke

It happens with every pregnancy. Mind you, I'm not the one puking, although it can be contagious. More amusing is the attitude of our kids when Alissa is puking her guts out in the morning.

Abbie: "Is mom throwing up?". Goes and checks. "Yup, she is throwing up! Is it green? Mine was green when I was sick and threw up."

Anna: "I wanna watch!"

Miles: "gah! hya ma gupp ada!"

Worse than the throwing up is the complaining. Yes, I know you don't feel well. I don't really need to be reminded 10 times a day. I ask what I can do to help, she says "nothing". Really, I just want to stop hearing about it... Maybe I should just get her a Tshirt that says "I am Pregnant and Sick and feel awful" so she wouldn't feel like she has to remind me.

I guess I'm complaining too. I have sympathy, but really we both knew what happens during pregnancy. No, I'm not a cruel husband. I just want my wife barefoot and pregnant and in the kitchen, is that so much to ask?

Busy Bee

Work's gotten busier, but I've still been trying to find time at home to work on personal projects. Here is the latest update. I'm UV'ing the game res model, but that's boring so here's the hi-res sculpt. I've gotta figure out how to make some clean normal maps from this (so far generating really ugly ones from Maya) so I can start texturing this guy....

Beast of Burden

I've been remodeling this character, I lost the original model. I need to figure out how to create better normal maps, since Maya seems to be acting weird and Zbrush3 doesn't export normal maps. Then I need to paint textures for it, which is the important part. I'm wondering if this hi-rez sculpt makes the character too "busy", as the original was much simpler... I will be making the saddle and stuff too....