The first picture I ever attempted to ink with my tablet is still sitting unfinished on my hard drive. Not because I gave up, or because it's too hard, but because I am a perfectionist. I scanned the sketch in at a very high dpi then got all caught up in tweaking anatomy and making the lines look perfect no matter how far in you zoomed. It will be a very lovely bit of fan art if I were to ever finish. Would you like to see it?
It looks pretty good so far, doesn't it? For those of you who don't know, this is Brainiac 5 and Supergirl. Brainy is inspired by his cartoon version from Legion of Superheros, which Supergirl never appeared in, which I think is a tragedy.
The question is, where to you stop tweaking? On this image, I could conceivably stop right here and call it good. Do I though? Should I shade more than just the hair or will it become overworked? Do I add a background?
In truth what I really need is to work more on is deciding what I want from an image before I even sketch it. I've heard rumors about these crazy things called thumbnail images that help you figure out things like composition and mood before you even get to this point. Someday I may actually attempt to use them.
That someday isn't today however. Maybe next time?
I think you stop at 200–400% magnification. I mean you don't zoom in more to make sure it looks great at those mags, you just restrict yourself to tweaking at those mags.
ReplyDeleteI could NEVER have that kind of self-restraint though (I <3 me some 1600%), so maybe making it look good at one of those mags is a good compromise?
Aww, Blogger doesn't let me edit my post. :( I forgot to say, yay for Supergirl! I don't know who Brainiac 5 is, but he looks cute. :)
ReplyDeleteI think if you start shading more than you have, you will need to keep shading new parts to make it look balanced, so probably no more shading.
I think the addition of a background would be awesome.