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You know it is annoying when you start working on something, have so much fun, get through the initial submission process and then reach this box with barely anything to write in mind. Perhaps that's I keep seeing some artists submit with just a "." or maybe they've just said the same things before several times over.

I don't know.

Anyway, Artgrounds sketcher was being a pain and dc'ing me to no end recently although today it hasn't once. Which is interesting, I don't know if I should try my luck and draw on it or just wait and see if it behaves more often. I don't want to be wasting my time.

So from that I dug up photoshop again and had a crack at a picture with a background as I usually don't do them. 3D classes start again in a week so I felt a need to come up with something even if it doesn't fit in with what we do I'd hopefully figure out a short to do in the background. I don't know though, I mean my 3D knowledge is almost nill still. Sure I know how to push buttons in max, but I highly doubt that is what they mean by "strong 3d skills required". It's largely why despite I'm studying 3D you haven't seen jack of it here yet. When I understand form better and can get it out perhaps, but not till then.

I know the top shelf is wonky, the hands are malformed as well as the feet. I'm no grand artist but hopefully if I keep at backgrounds as well as advancements in figures I can get half way at least. :> I'll have to keep going.

This is the 3rd time I've tried to sketch this character and after a long time of not doing figures. Out of what I forgot I'm surprised I managed to remember this much of them. I should look into knees more too. And shoulders! My god, half the time I don't pay attention to if I'm drawing a woman or a man and make it obvious (apart from the breasts). Lol I'll have to fix that one day.

So yeah, like I was saying I started working on this in photoshop for about 2 nights and a bit at the time of writing and I webcammed my screen to a couple of msn friends for fun. Seeing as sketcher was being a pain (sketcher is a paint chat application). We had fun, one contact is practically sold on the software after seeing how rapidly you can non destructively slap test colours over the top.

Hmm what else.

Ok, I started with a basic sketch and I chose to open with the character first, moving it around the canvas and shrinking it to fit with the free transform(shift bound) as I went. This was so I could figure out the rough scale of the background better than if I didn't (still not perfect but oh well). Then I muscled in on the background starting with the bar then moving out on objects I think.

As we did a photo exercise in 3D class involving the darker side of photoshop - the clone tool, which as a beginner digital artist I came to hate with a passion for the implications. It actually came in handy for this piece putting detail on the right side of the bar edge of the image and replicating it across with some basic touch up. Like wise with the extruding rectangles on the bar, cloned the left one over and then painted over.

I just winged the metal and glass as I usually do, using the same method of contrasts on both, except I tried to make greater use of the background colour for the glass to give a transparent feel, I think I need to tone down and localise their shininess more and add some liquid contents but we'll see what I do.

After I got that far with the background I decided for a change of pace and to escape approaching boredom I'd start messing with the character (she remained a single colour silhouette for some time) and so I sketched in her basic outfit with white. Played around with striping it for now, I'll have to curve those out more and make them shiny as it is the chrome corseted character. And I'll need to find a name.

I'm also thinking of what I could do with this depending on how I can manage the 3D class, if I can stay on top of my fears and get on with learning. Perhaps I'll have a detective walk into the bar (she's expecting, he's not) and she'll turn to face him and introduce (with the gun out lol) and tell him she heard he'd need some help moving on his case. etc etc ...

I don't know. 8D But I'm having fun and it feels like I've made a step forward somewhere, somehow. Don't know where it is leading yet, but it feels good.

-Laters.