Fanfic image 3 of 5

Frankly, I was not happy with that last one. I’m going to leave it as-is, but I felt it did a disservice to Kaz’ original sketch. This time I’ve got a pretty important image I’ve been working on, and it was important I get it right. So rather than draw lines over Kaz’ original, I just cleaned it up a bit and used his sketch as the line art layer.

Here’s the original:

This is, in my opinion, one of the best sketches of Katia and QW I’ve seen because I asked him to age them up a lot. Granted Quill would be the really tough one as, if lifespans are constant across races, she’d probably be dead by now. But I’d prefer to think Argonians live longer, whether or not that’s true in TES lore. Anyway, both are instantly recognizable but instantly elderly too, and they’re not wearing their “standard” outfits. Pretty awesome work IMHO.

I felt it very important I not botch this up like the last one. Here’s the end result. I don’t know that it’s as awesome as the original or not, but by keeping his linework I think it’s definitely a big improvement over the last one I did!

In the fanfic, Katia is nearly blind here and is dictating a letter that Quill is helping her write to someone. Pretty crucial image as it sets up the whole thing. Anyway, I like it one hell of a lot better than my last one. I think I’ll stick with this method. 2 more to do before I release the story.

Hey! I just thought of a caption! The Elderly Scroll.

Weedum-Ja and Enchanter

I did another thing. I think really I’m just trying to get better at coloring. The more I thought about it, the more I realized this shading doesn’t make a lot of sense. But by then I’d gone to far and said “to hell with it, it doesn’t have to be physically possible shading, right?”

I won’t go through all the layers, just starting and ending. Here’s what Kaz sent me:

And here’s what I ended up with.

Frankly I’m not sure the coloring/shading even is an improvement. But all work is increasing my abilities, right? RIGHT? I hope so. This took me about 3 days (on and off) to complete so dammit, I BETTER be learning something!

I’m particularly anxious about the next one he’s sending me though. I conceived of an entire fanfiction (just a short thing) around it. I may ask him to do a couple more related to that fanfic too next stream.

Nah “The Killer”

Last member of the Not-Yet-Ready-For-Clothing Players band. Nah on lead guitar just seemed appropriate to me. Seems she brought a couple friends along too!

This one’s kinda weird. First, Kaz drew her holding the guitar in her elbow and fretting… air. Why? Honestly, I don’t know. Kaz probably does! But wth, I’m going for it anyway even if I don’t get it! Second, there’s no clever censoring arm or guitar strap here. Nah’s just kinda hangin’ all out here.

Now look, I’m obviously no prude. Some would call my stories porn (though I at least like to think of them more as erotica). But really full nipplage on the Fanart Booru is asking for trouble. Even if Kaz allowed it, it’s bound to cause a ton of too-risque stuff by pushing the boundary. So I’ve added a “pasties” layer (which really is just deleting the nipples essentially and making her nip-less.

One last thing – on here, though the blog isn’t marked NSFW, I’m going for it. So if you will be offended, I apologize in advance.

So here’s Kaz’ original sketch of Nah on guitar:

So obviously the first step was lineart. As seems to be common, I stuck some color on accidentally on the wrong layer.

Ok, so I deviated from Kaz’ original here in a couple places so I may as well fess up now. First, I emphasized her butt more than the original. Because I like butts I guess. But that’s my perversion, not Kaz’. I don’t THINK I overemphasized the boobies, though I did smooth the curves out. I also DID outline the nipples but removed the outline later as I felt it looked odd with black outlines around the areola.

Second, I simplified the bats a bit – dropping their feet mostly. Also later I added a 2nd knob on the guitar (later) because… well, no electric guitar has only 1 knob. Ok, next up… flat color:

And then, of course, time for shading. Mostly it went as expected but the hair was the bitch on this one. Just flat colored hair sucks, and I’m SURE if given more time and tutorials I could have done better. But really, it’s a naked vampire playing a guitar. How much time does it really deserve? Even the bats get a bit of shading. By the time I was done, I really liked those bats. They just look so HAPPY!

And then, of course, my standard background…

So that’s the version I’ll post on the adult sites. But I knew the nips would be over the top for the fanart booru at Prequel. So out come the pasties layer:

And that’ll do it for the Not-Yet-Ready-For-Clothing Players. Maybe I’ll put em all on stage together though – if it can be done without looking too wonky.

Aggy “The Banshee”

He’s the ghost with the most, so cool he’s cold, so laid back he should be laying down, it’s Aggy wailin’ on the sax in the Not-Yet-Ready-For-Clothing Players band!

So I started with this from Kaz:

First thing I started on this, I felt it might be trouble. Aggy just isn’t very defined and with the sunglasses on (that I suggested btw) there’s even less… there. But I charged ahead anyway…

I accidentally put some color work on the line layer. I seem to do that sort of thing I could probably fix it but it doesn’t matter really. But you can probably see here what I meant. There’s just not a lot TO Aggy. I chose to interpret some lines Kaz drew at the top of his head as wispy hair. Not sure it was meant to be that, but I ran with it.

Then I did the flat color. Aggy was no problem – he’s blue. Duh… but that sax… Oh did I underestimate that!

I tried LOTS of methods on the sax, none of which looked good. Gradients, complex brushes, nothing looked good at all. Finally I just took a look at a picture of a sax and copied some colores. That one reflection inside the horn is the best thing I did. The rest looks meh. But at least it’s recognizable as a sax I think.

Finally I decided I would do highlights on a ghost. It would look weird next to the others if I didn’t. Though honestly I didn’t spend a lot of time on it. Then opened up the transparency a bit so you can see a bit through him. I do like how the sunglass highlighting came out. With no eyes to work with, it was nice to get that in at least.

And that’s it. Aggy’s in the band! Only one left – Nah, the vampiric guitarist (with full nipplage! Yes, Kaz didn’t cop out and hide her boobs behind anything! So who am I to do anything less?)

Weedum “Six Fingers” Ja

Can you separate a name like “Weedum-Ja” like that? Well, anyway, I did. Here’s our Fourth band member, Weedum-Ja. She’s the one that dragged S’thengir into the band. I call her “Six Fingers” because Kaz tends to draw Argonians with only 3 fingers per hand.

So here’s she is tickling the ivories as they say. But this time I won’t post the layers. Haven’t got a lot to say about it, though I do like her!

S’thengir keeps the beat!

Got another one! Here’s the original drawing by Kaz:

So I took that and converted to line art, using the new skillz Kaz taught me sorta…

And then removed the sketchwork and added flat colors. Well, I did do a gradient on the drums.

And finally the shading and highlighting. (I must say I do love the eye technique that I learned on a tutorial!) I could honestly have spent more time on shading in the chesticle area, but got tired of it so I’m calling this finished.

So now it’s time to introduce the drummer for the Not-Yet-Ready-For-Clothing Players band. Yes, it’s that surly bartender you all know and love. Somehow the girls have roped him into playing for them, though he seems none too happy about it. But then, he never seems too happy about anything.

Personally, I don’t think he would ever have joined the band until he realized what the view would be like from the back of the band. He does have a thing for Weedum-Ja after all. And the others provide great scenery too. Though, of course, he would NEVER admit it. He just says Weedum-Ja talked him into it.

Quill-Weave Vocalist Final

Rather than just put it here and shut up, I enjoy yabbering too much. So I started with this. (Again, the blue is mine – I just don’t like white backgrounds) This is the sketch Kaz drew for me.

So the first step was to turn it into lineart that I could work the colors around. After Kaz’s suggestion of using a tapered stroke on paths for lines that end, I came up with this improvement:

Now I did screw up a bit and put some shading on the line layer, but owell. Notice the lines around the nose for instance that fade, or the breastbone line. Anyway, once I did that, it really did improve the overall look. However, I suspect that drawing such lines is easier in GraphicsGale than Photoshop. So then time to flat-color:

Again, this had a bit of highlighting that I improperly put on the line layer, but so goes it. The only color I had to improvise was the tongue here really. The head does look a bit large to me, but I was worried about shading since I really didn’t know how I’d be able to shade the snout/forehead. But I think I ended up doing okay anyway:

I watched a tutorial on eye shading and think I got a pretty interesting look for her eyes here, Spent an inordinate amount of time on her legs and belly, but that’s okay because I LIKE legs and bellies! And boob shading of course. Can never forget the boob shading. Considered shading for the mic stand, but then I decided that based on the light source, it probably wouldn’t shade here. Like my mic stand gradient? I sorta do!

And then, of course, throwing in the background. Definitely looks nice if I do say so myself! Off to post it all over the place and get all the loves. (ok, ok, it’s Kaz that drew it. But hey, I’m improving too!)

Katia Bass Final

bdprequel:

Ok, I finished all I plan to do on my Katia bass player. (till I get the all done and do one massive full-band image!) ~~If anyone feels like uploading this to the fanart booru, be my guest. I’ll include a link to a high res image at the bottom here that would be best. E621 is fine too.~~ HOLD OFF on that! Kaz has a suggestion to improve the line art and I’d love to see if that will make it better!

I just think I’ve exhausted my supply of inappropriate uploads on the Fanart booru to do it myself. I tried to keep it within Questionable bounds, but I don’t feel like taking the risk myself.

This is not a tutorial, it’s just a blog of what I did and I’m a beginner at these things for sure! But since Photoshop let’s you do layers, here’s all my layers and what they were intended for.

First, of course, Kaz’s original – scanned.

Next, I drew lines over it.

During one of Kaz’s streams, I saw how he was doing it, or at least I thought I did. Of course, he did it like lightning fast but I think I got the gist. I draw a path, curving the path as needed to at least come close to the primary lines.

The lines I drew were much fatter than this layer indicates – I thinned them down later. Once a path is in place, you use Stroke to draw a line over it at the color/size that the current paintbrush is set for. So here’s that stage (again, these lines are thinner than what I started with. I just thought the ending lines were too think so I thinned them down):

Then I put in the solid colors. I used the fill bucket for large areas, but then went over the edges with a small brush so there’s no edge weirdness. That took a long time to say the least. But I learned the necessity of that a while back when doing another color-job some time ago.

That’s where I left it yesterday. This morning I watched some tutorials and looked at the biggest repository of Katia fan art there is. (No silly, not the fanart booru… e621!) For research purposes only of course! Please be gentle – shading is a dark art to me and a lot of it is guesswork, but here’s what I finally came up with. (I tried to keep the shading modest till I get more confident with it)

And then the easy part – found a background ‘stage’ and stuck her in it:

BUT then Kaz suggested a tapering method of improving the line art. This is new and updated here. Mostly lines that end are now tapered rather than hard-ended. Mostly around eyes, mouth and boobies. Also a layer was causing background to be lighter than intended.

And that’s it for Katia. I plan to do the others too of course, and eventually put them all on stage with Katia.

Here’s the promised link to a higher-res version:

https://68.media.tumblr.com/a756e45b6e282af19d23479f4aac5ea9/tumblr_inline_oj4edwQaGj1sn6wro_1280.png

QW is next!

Reblogging my own – is that a shitty thing to do? But doing so because Kaz suggested an improvement that I think warrants the reblog. New image here and high res is improved as well.

Katia Bass Final

Ok, I finished all I plan to do on my Katia bass player. (till I get the all done and do one massive full-band image!) ~~If anyone feels like uploading this to the fanart booru, be my guest. I’ll include a link to a high res image at the bottom here that would be best. E621 is fine too.~~ HOLD OFF on that! Kaz has a suggestion to improve the line art and I’d love to see if that will make it better!

I just think I’ve exhausted my supply of inappropriate uploads on the Fanart booru to do it myself. I tried to keep it within Questionable bounds, but I don’t feel like taking the risk myself.

This is not a tutorial, it’s just a blog of what I did and I’m a beginner at these things for sure! But since Photoshop let’s you do layers, here’s all my layers and what they were intended for.

First, of course, Kaz’s original – scanned.

Next, I drew lines over it.

During one of Kaz’s streams, I saw how he was doing it, or at least I thought I did. Of course, he did it like lightning fast but I think I got the gist. I draw a path, curving the path as needed to at least come close to the primary lines.

The lines I drew were much fatter than this layer indicates – I thinned them down later. Once a path is in place, you use Stroke to draw a line over it at the color/size that the current paintbrush is set for. So here’s that stage (again, these lines are thinner than what I started with. I just thought the ending lines were too think so I thinned them down):

Then I put in the solid colors. I used the fill bucket for large areas, but then went over the edges with a small brush so there’s no edge weirdness. That took a long time to say the least. But I learned the necessity of that a while back when doing another color-job some time ago.

That’s where I left it yesterday. This morning I watched some tutorials and looked at the biggest repository of Katia fan art there is. (No silly, not the fanart booru… e621!) For research purposes only of course! Please be gentle – shading is a dark art to me and a lot of it is guesswork, but here’s what I finally came up with. (I tried to keep the shading modest till I get more confident with it)

And then the easy part – found a background ‘stage’ and stuck her in it:

BUT then Kaz suggested a tapering method of improving the line art. This is new and updated here. Mostly lines that end are now tapered rather than hard-ended. Mostly around eyes, mouth and boobies. Also a layer was causing background to be lighter than intended.

And that’s it for Katia. I plan to do the others too of course, and eventually put them all on stage with Katia.

Here’s the promised link to a higher-res version:

https://68.media.tumblr.com/a756e45b6e282af19d23479f4aac5ea9/tumblr_inline_oj4edwQaGj1sn6wro_1280.png

QW is next!

KatiaBlues 1

I think I’ll kinda document my work on some of these Kazerad things he sent me. I’m INCREDIBLY slow at this stuff. Photoshop is just too complex for my simple thinking. I usually just do stuff like this in Paint.net but this needs more tools, so I’m learning as I go along. Here’s Day 1′s progress on Just One image!

The original from Kaz. (I added the blue background because white just hurts my eyes too much, and did some basic cleanup to make it easier to find the lines that are important)

And here’s my lineart and basic flat colors:

Still got a long way to go – and I’ll not emphasize those nips any more than they already are. Yeah, kinda NSFW but not extravagant.

Next, fingernails and beginning shading.