Saturday, March 17, 2007

The Dance - Colored!

Warning: Long Post Ahead! If you just wanna see the end result then skip to the end.

Anyhow, I colored this one and I think it turned out quite nicely. For some reason or another I decided it would be cool to show you kinda the process of how I did it and the layers in the final piece. Soo... Here it is!

1. With the picture imported into Flash, I drew lines, and saved as two files, one with a background and one without.
2. Here is the pic without the background. I end up putting these into photoshop as separate layers, with a coloring layer in the middle. The background is still there and acts as kind of a guide for coloring, and since I have a layer with lines in front, it means I can't color over top of the lines I already have, it just colors behind them.
3. So I add some basic colors. I actually think it looks pretty good without any shading at all.
4. Now I'll just show you how it ends up layering in the final product. First we have the background. It's a pretty simple background, just adding a bit of color and smudging, then adding the dots for the disco ball. Then I added a radial blur, with the center being where the ball would be to make it look like the light is moving. I did a bit more smudging at the bottom to try and make it look a bit like the light was on a different surface when it was on the floor.
5. I then made another layer overtop of the last one. I used black with low opacity (transparent) so that each time i color, it makes the stuff I've already colored on darker than stuff I haven't. Doing this, I made the stuff by the ball the lightest, then right behind the ball, I added some bright color. Then It was just a matter of smudging some of that color out and some of the black off.
6. Now here is how it looked after it was all colored, without the lines. This is a fairly straight forward process of adding lines of darker color for shadows, then using the blur to make them stand out a bit less. I also put some color in the hair and smudge with the grain to make it look more real(ish)...
7. Here it is, lines and all. Just one more step.
8. To finish it off, I added a yellow spotlight on the color layer, originating from the disco ball. This just makes them fit in a bit more with their surroundings and whatnot. I think it turned out pretty well over all.

1 comment:

Demeur said...

Actually you have some good artwork there. I like the fur on your boxing kangaroo and the couple at the dance reminds me of some of the stuff on cartoon network. If you really like doing this, keep at it. I used to play around with a camera for our high school newspaper and landed up a professional photographer before getting into the environmental field.