AMKitsune: @PermanentFace: But 'Santa Claws' here is clearly a member of the 'Christmas faction' and everyone know that for one night each year, every Christmas celebrating household is allied with the Christmas faction! (making it perfectly legal to enter their homes)
AMKitsune: @Bill: If you're unsure which will work best for you, why not try them all? Try drawing some random shapes on another piece of paper and filling them in with the different mediums. That way you can go into the colouring stage knowing which method you prefer/works best for you.
AMKitsune: In order of preference, A,C then B.
Although I have to say, I'm finding her more 'feline' face a little uncanny-valley-esque. Specifically in B and C. I think it's probably the size of her eyes and their distance to her nose and mouth more than anything.
I know that this was uncalled for, but this is somewhat how I'd imagine Katia's facial proportions working in your style. Of course, this is just a personal stylistic preference/interpretation, so make of it what you will.
Whatever the case, I look forward to seeing which ever of these sketches you choose to take forward.
AMKitsune: Looks a bit like her tail to me. Possibly wrapped around her leg. I'm not entirely sure how the logistics of her robe and tail work here, but that's my take on it.
AMKitsune: Might as well throw my opinions into the ring as well.
There are a number of different ways to learn, some working better for some people than for others.
Personally, I advise drawing what you want, when you want to. Improvement comes with practice and practice comes naturally when you enjoy it.
Also, don't be afraid to use references. To begin with, you'll probably have difficulty getting proportions right which can be quite a barrier to things looking right. As humans, we're very tuned into what looks normal proportion wise, which is why when a character is drawn with slightly disproportionate legs or a smaller than usual head, we instinctively pick up on these things as being somehow wrong.
Secondly, sketch out the poses and positions of your scene and characters as roughly and as many times as you need to before you're happy enough to flesh it out with additional details. Your whole image is based on this this crucial step, so if you go ahead and start adding details, colour and whatnot before you're completely happy with the base structure, you're going to be stuck with an image that's only as good as your original posing and proportions. Spending the additional time tweaking and refining your sketches can raise your picture up from being a 'good' picture to a 'better' picture. Have you noticed how many 'quick sketches' by experienced artists can seem so much better than fully coloured and shaded works by less experienced ones? That's usually because of the better posing and proportions that come with all that additional practice.
Thirdly, when using references to help you with posing and proportions, don't just copy what you see into your own work, but pay attention to what looks good and try to get an idea for 'why' it looks good. The more you do this, the more these 'unspoken rules' will become second nature to you and you'll find yourself needing to use references to get good results less and less. I'll give you an example, if you google image search "human face drawing", you'll find loads of really well done drawings of faces. The reason these all tend to look so fantastic is because their artists generally have a fantastic understanding of human facial structure and proportions. If you imagine one of these images, but shift the eyes apart a bit and lower the mouth a touch, it wouldn't look nearly as good. I'm not saying that you need to be able to draw anything like these other artists for your work to look good, but as you practice and endeavour to improve your work, this is the sort of thing that you'll naturally improve at over time. You might not actively notice yourself getting better as the process may be slow, but if you periodically look at your older work and compare it to your most recent stuff, you'll be able to see how far you've come. If you analyse your work even more, you'll be able to tell what you're not so good at and where you could use additional practice. As any artist will tell you, there's no short-cut for this. It's just a matter of keep going and pushing yourself to make something better than you did before. Having fun while doing it just makes the whole process all the easier .
Finally, be prepared to create a new account at some point, because the name "AwefulAspiringArtist" isn't going to very suitable as you get better and better .
I hope that was of some help to you, and best of luck with your artwork.
AMKitsune: @scoopski: I've only recently picked up Crypt of the Necrodancer myself (during the recent steam sale) and immediately installed the Katia mod as well.
AMKitsune: @Toxic: Looking really good . One last thing I've noticed though. The background blends in with her cloak quite a bit when viewed from a distance. Perhaps shift it's hue a touch to better differentiate if from the foreground? I don't know, just a thought. See how it looks and go from there.
AMKitsune: You know, it's funny how these assassins are just as obvious with their armour/uniform as the dark brotherhood typically are. You'd think that an organisation of assassins would go for a more plain clothes approach, wouldn't you?
AMKitsune: I'd also say 3 or 4, simply because the more recognisable the icon can be at a glance, the better.
Although it also has to be said that the icon might very well be too dark. Imagine one of these icons on a desktop along with a bunch of other programs and files. Most of the icons on my desktop are either very bright, colourful or have a balanced mix of dark and bright areas. Something so overwhelmingly dark may stand out against everything else on a person's desktop, and not in a good way. Also I measured the height of these and they seem to come out at 50px tall. I had a quick look and that seems to be a little bit larger than the closest icon size in windows.
https://www.creativefreedom.co.uk/icon-designers-blog/windows-7-icon-sizes/
If you're making your icon as an aliased pixel art thing, you might need to either remake it multiple times to best fit the different icon sizes a user could choose from, or accept that any automatic resizing done by the computer will likely make the icon look a bit shit.
So two things to take away. Be aware of luminosity compared to other desktop icons and the fact that icons have standard resolutions. Hope that helped.
AMKitsune: @Dawoc: Just going to quickly point out that blacklists can be a hell of a lot more specific than blocking an image based on a single tag. Full details on the help page.
AMKitsune: @Nicros_Man: The last time I can remember having anything to do with a play was way back when I was part of the annual 'school Christmas play'. Needless to say, a group of amateur, school aged kids trying to put on a theatrical performance of any kind generally isn't going to result in the highest quality production imaginable... They were probably quite crap honestly. So yeah, when I think of plays, my first thought is cringey childhood overacting.
AMKitsune: @Mathematician: As is your audio rendition of it!
It raises a very interesting question about the use of tags here though.
This is an instrumental theme dedicated to Sigrid, yet being such, it neither explicitly features her in any way (no vocals) nor is sung by her (same reason). Should this really be tagged with Sigrid? I don't know. This is kind of uncharted territory .
AMKitsune: @Mezhik: Thanks . But as usual, the praise really belongs to the original artist. All I did was add a little solid colour (, a gradient and a little texture) to the scene. A bit like adding a pinch of salt to an already delicious beef stew.
@bluedraggy: Noo, don't let this stop you! If you had something in mind, colour away and share what you come up with. The more the merrier! (As you said before, I'd imagine Bishop would be happy to see your interpretation aw well.)
AMKitsune: I imagine that the orphanage wanted to teach the kids how to act somewhat civilised to stand more of a chance at getting adopted. They couldn't afford a proper instructor though, so they asked the first person they found on the street. It probably went a little something like this...
"Hey, you there! Got a few minutes? We're tying to teach the orphans how to act properly at a dinner and not like, well, orphans."
"Er, it depends. What would you want me to do exactly?"
"Nothing much. Just sit around a table eating some food and drinking some tea with them. Nothing special. We can't really afford to pay you anything though, so it would be purely a favour to us."
"...This food you mentioned. It's real food that I get to actually eat, right?"
"Well, yes, of course. But I don't see wha..."
"Deal!"
AMKitsune: How Bishop manages to create such a casually bad-ass Katia, I couldn't say. (sitting on the back of a giant beats probably helps)
However it was managed though, I just had to try giving it the old 'splash-o-paint'.
(hopefully I did the original justice. I've no idea of the armour is meant to be based on anything with a pre-exiting colour scheme.)
AMKitsune: @Anowon: You're quietly finishing off your dinner. You go to put the leftovers in the fridge when a booming sound from outside shakes the very foundations of the house...
AMKitsune: @TheUndoneSage4256: To clarify, I only made some colour/texture tweaks to the other version, so haven't really made any contributions present in this version.
AMKitsune: It's not often we get a picture here that's been through this many iterations by this many different people. I suppose you could call this a 'surprise collaboration'?
AMKitsune: I also like both versions. Both for slightly different reasons. I prefer the colour choices of Nicros Man's version, but the overall muted tone of Draggies version. Draggies version has a little more detailing on Katia's outfit, but misses out on the ever important "pale chest fur patch". Finally, Draggies gradient background, as simple as it is, compliments the darker, more serious tone of the image.
I have no idea what the original characters from this scenario are meant to look like though, so this is mostly just 'artistic preference' talking
AMKitsune: I got a good chuckle out of this.
Also, I think I just developed a head-canon for how these two are related. Nicros Man's Katia is who original Katia strives to be. She's Katia's literal self aspiration! Well, she's already bought some proper underwear, so she's on the right path at least
AMKitsune: Remember Katia, in order to defeat the nightmare king, you need to find all 9 upgrade doom-stones to unlock the water sword with a red X on it. Trust me, I read the wiki.
AMKitsune: To everyone who's mentioned wanting a blacklist, I've been working on a client side solution for your blacklisting needs. It's not perfect and is still a work in progress, but if anyone wants to try it out sooner rather than later, you should be able to edit your blacklists from my test page (in the black bordered section near the bottom). If 'how to use it' is in any way unclear, PM me about it and I'll try to factor that into the final release. Of course, it'll eventually move to a more appropriate location, so it won't be on my test page forever.
AMKitsune: @WBGaming81: Mikeythefox and I have been working on one off and on for a while now, but it's still not finished. Have you got a finished one? If so, can we have a link please?
AMKitsune: Oh boy, this is becoming quite the contentious issue.
To the people drawing their own original characters:
The reason that we dissuade people uploading images only containing their original characters and no characters from Prequel itself is that other readers come here to see fan art pertaining to the comic itself. For that reason, people can feel like their time's wasted when they end up looking at pictures that aren't related to what they came for.
I agree that it's great for someone to be able to flex their creative muscles and create their own original characters, settings and stories (and I'm sure Kazerad's glad to see people taking inspiration from his work as well!) but the problem is that to the majority of viewers, these characters and stories have nothing to do with Prequel (outside of a shared Elderscrolls universe and possible stylistic similarities).
To the people annoyed at people posting their original characters here:
In fairness to 'OC artists', the rules around uploading fanart containing only original, prequel inspired characters has been about as clear as mud until recently, so it's hardly these artists fault in that regard.
If you don't like a picture because it contains an artist's own character or self insert, that's fine. You're entitled to your own preferences just as much as anyone else. Just please don't go out of your way to voice your distaste simply because of any included characters and where they came from. These original characters usually mean a great deal more to their creators than they do to a casual onlooker. The fact that they chose to create their own Prequel inspired characters or story is a testament to how much they like the comic. It simply may not come across that way to other people.
The fact of the matter is that different people have different ways of expressing their creativity and contributing to the 'fan community'. Some people make pictures or stories about the main characters everybody loves/hates, some may focus on lesser known side characters, others may unofficially extend the story in different directions with their own characters and narratives (some people even do things that wouldn't even be considered 'art' like hanging around the comments section welcoming new readers to the comic and advising them how to submit commands. The fancy visual archive page that the comic has, completely fan-made as well).
Unfortunately though for the booru, as a site meant to be made available to as many fans as possible, we have to try to tailor the gallery to best suit the interests of the majority of viewers. In this case, that means making sure that every image (or as many as possible) has something that a viewer can easily recognise/understand as being from Prequel to prevent people being disappointed with seemingly 'off-topic' content. I don't for a single second want to imply that fan created characters and narratives are not legitimate fanart, they most certainly are! It's just a case of not being what people expect/want to see when visiting a fanart page.
That's my understanding of the situation at least.
AMKitsune: I just realised that my original version didn't credit Kazerad for the actual original that this Katia came from. I suppose that if edits like these 'inherit' the artists of their predecessors, that means that Kaz is partially responsible for this pic as well!
Also, holy shit! I wasn't expecting to see this today. I think you've actually done a better job of the lighting that I did. Great work!
AMKitsune: Absolutely disgusting. To think that Quill-Weave would have such an inappropriate image of a personal friend is extremely disappointing. We all know she respects her friends enough to at least opt for the painted underwear version instead
AMKitsune: My headcanon for the surprisingly human facial hair is that as they grow older, some Khajiit choose to make themselves look more rugged by dyeing parts of their face. I refuse to believe that their fur colouration naturally forms in such specific patterns!
Unless, that's how it naturally is for them and humans decided to start trimming beards to match the Khajiit look many, many years ago. Both options as unlikely as the other! (I'm going to stick with the dyeing option)
AMKitsune: All joking about 'being her own worst nightmare' aside, that's a really good look for her.
@Toryu-Mau: That's no reason not to make your own version. Go forth and draw! (then show you made please)
AMKitsune: So... Many... Cats! (and other people)
Were these all applied with iron-on printer printer paper, or were they printed directly onto the shirt? Either way, this must have taken a while to put together!
AMKitsune: I'm also curious as to why this isn't part of the pool. It's part of the series after all, and the story wouldn't make sense with a chapter missing, right?
AMKitsune: @Vinarto: Calm down, it's not their fault. This is something that was decided long after the booru was first set-up and there's nothing on the 'sign-up page' about uploading 'OC only' artwork. This is something that Kazerad ideally needs to address. Until then, the best we can do is ask people not to upload 'OC only' art as and when it happens.
AMKitsune: @DOOMGUY11: Frost Resistance Such an effect probably has warming properties. Too much warming could possibly lead to fire. This is also Katia we're talking about. If something can go wrong, it probably will.
Dramatic Descriptions
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Although I have to say, I'm finding her more 'feline' face a little uncanny-valley-esque. Specifically in B and C. I think it's probably the size of her eyes and their distance to her nose and mouth more than anything.
I know that this was uncalled for, but this is somewhat how I'd imagine Katia's facial proportions working in your style. Of course, this is just a personal stylistic preference/interpretation, so make of it what you will.
Whatever the case, I look forward to seeing which ever of these sketches you choose to take forward.
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Also, the artefacts from the up-scaled background hurt my soul.
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There are a number of different ways to learn, some working better for some people than for others.
Personally, I advise drawing what you want, when you want to. Improvement comes with practice and practice comes naturally when you enjoy it.
Also, don't be afraid to use references. To begin with, you'll probably have difficulty getting proportions right which can be quite a barrier to things looking right. As humans, we're very tuned into what looks normal proportion wise, which is why when a character is drawn with slightly disproportionate legs or a smaller than usual head, we instinctively pick up on these things as being somehow wrong.
Secondly, sketch out the poses and positions of your scene and characters as roughly and as many times as you need to before you're happy enough to flesh it out with additional details. Your whole image is based on this this crucial step, so if you go ahead and start adding details, colour and whatnot before you're completely happy with the base structure, you're going to be stuck with an image that's only as good as your original posing and proportions. Spending the additional time tweaking and refining your sketches can raise your picture up from being a 'good' picture to a 'better' picture. Have you noticed how many 'quick sketches' by experienced artists can seem so much better than fully coloured and shaded works by less experienced ones? That's usually because of the better posing and proportions that come with all that additional practice.
Thirdly, when using references to help you with posing and proportions, don't just copy what you see into your own work, but pay attention to what looks good and try to get an idea for 'why' it looks good. The more you do this, the more these 'unspoken rules' will become second nature to you and you'll find yourself needing to use references to get good results less and less. I'll give you an example, if you google image search "human face drawing", you'll find loads of really well done drawings of faces. The reason these all tend to look so fantastic is because their artists generally have a fantastic understanding of human facial structure and proportions. If you imagine one of these images, but shift the eyes apart a bit and lower the mouth a touch, it wouldn't look nearly as good. I'm not saying that you need to be able to draw anything like these other artists for your work to look good, but as you practice and endeavour to improve your work, this is the sort of thing that you'll naturally improve at over time. You might not actively notice yourself getting better as the process may be slow, but if you periodically look at your older work and compare it to your most recent stuff, you'll be able to see how far you've come. If you analyse your work even more, you'll be able to tell what you're not so good at and where you could use additional practice. As any artist will tell you, there's no short-cut for this. It's just a matter of keep going and pushing yourself to make something better than you did before. Having fun while doing it just makes the whole process all the easier
Finally, be prepared to create a new account at some point, because the name "AwefulAspiringArtist" isn't going to very suitable as you get better and better
I hope that was of some help to you, and best of luck with your artwork.
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Although it also has to be said that the icon might very well be too dark. Imagine one of these icons on a desktop along with a bunch of other programs and files. Most of the icons on my desktop are either very bright, colourful or have a balanced mix of dark and bright areas. Something so overwhelmingly dark may stand out against everything else on a person's desktop, and not in a good way. Also I measured the height of these and they seem to come out at 50px tall. I had a quick look and that seems to be a little bit larger than the closest icon size in windows.
https://www.creativefreedom.co.uk/icon-designers-blog/windows-7-icon-sizes/
If you're making your icon as an aliased pixel art thing, you might need to either remake it multiple times to best fit the different icon sizes a user could choose from, or accept that any automatic resizing done by the computer will likely make the icon look a bit shit.
So two things to take away. Be aware of luminosity compared to other desktop icons and the fact that icons have standard resolutions. Hope that helped.
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It raises a very interesting question about the use of tags here though.
This is an instrumental theme dedicated to Sigrid, yet being such, it neither explicitly features her in any way (no vocals) nor is sung by her (same reason). Should this really be tagged with Sigrid? I don't know. This is kind of uncharted territory
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@bluedraggy: Noo, don't let this stop you! If you had something in mind, colour away and share what you come up with. The more the merrier! (As you said before, I'd imagine Bishop would be happy to see your interpretation aw well.)
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"Hey, you there! Got a few minutes? We're tying to teach the orphans how to act properly at a dinner and not like, well, orphans."
"Er, it depends. What would you want me to do exactly?"
"Nothing much. Just sit around a table eating some food and drinking some tea with them. Nothing special. We can't really afford to pay you anything though, so it would be purely a favour to us."
"...This food you mentioned. It's real food that I get to actually eat, right?"
"Well, yes, of course. But I don't see wha..."
"Deal!"
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However it was managed though, I just had to try giving it the old 'splash-o-paint'.
(hopefully I did the original justice. I've no idea of the armour is meant to be based on anything with a pre-exiting colour scheme.)
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"ARE YOU GOING TO EAT THAT?"
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I have no idea what the original characters from this scenario are meant to look like though, so this is mostly just 'artistic preference' talking
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Also, I think I just developed a head-canon for how these two are related. Nicros Man's Katia is who original Katia strives to be. She's Katia's literal self aspiration! Well, she's already bought some proper underwear, so she's on the right path at least
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http://www.prequeladventure.com/fanartbooru/lexicon/AMKTestPage#blacklistEditor
@ThatGuyWithAKhajiitWaifu: Nope. I had a look and there was no sign of any kind of 'tag blacklisting feature'. Quite surprising actually.
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To the people drawing their own original characters:
The reason that we dissuade people uploading images only containing their original characters and no characters from Prequel itself is that other readers come here to see fan art pertaining to the comic itself. For that reason, people can feel like their time's wasted when they end up looking at pictures that aren't related to what they came for.
I agree that it's great for someone to be able to flex their creative muscles and create their own original characters, settings and stories (and I'm sure Kazerad's glad to see people taking inspiration from his work as well!) but the problem is that to the majority of viewers, these characters and stories have nothing to do with Prequel (outside of a shared Elderscrolls universe and possible stylistic similarities).
To the people annoyed at people posting their original characters here:
In fairness to 'OC artists', the rules around uploading fanart containing only original, prequel inspired characters has been about as clear as mud until recently, so it's hardly these artists fault in that regard.
If you don't like a picture because it contains an artist's own character or self insert, that's fine. You're entitled to your own preferences just as much as anyone else. Just please don't go out of your way to voice your distaste simply because of any included characters and where they came from. These original characters usually mean a great deal more to their creators than they do to a casual onlooker. The fact that they chose to create their own Prequel inspired characters or story is a testament to how much they like the comic. It simply may not come across that way to other people.
The fact of the matter is that different people have different ways of expressing their creativity and contributing to the 'fan community'. Some people make pictures or stories about the main characters everybody loves/hates, some may focus on lesser known side characters, others may unofficially extend the story in different directions with their own characters and narratives (some people even do things that wouldn't even be considered 'art' like hanging around the comments section welcoming new readers to the comic and advising them how to submit commands. The fancy visual archive page that the comic has, completely fan-made as well).
Unfortunately though for the booru, as a site meant to be made available to as many fans as possible, we have to try to tailor the gallery to best suit the interests of the majority of viewers. In this case, that means making sure that every image (or as many as possible) has something that a viewer can easily recognise/understand as being from Prequel to prevent people being disappointed with seemingly 'off-topic' content. I don't for a single second want to imply that fan created characters and narratives are not legitimate fanart, they most certainly are! It's just a case of not being what people expect/want to see when visiting a fanart page.
That's my understanding of the situation at least.
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Also, holy shit! I wasn't expecting to see this today. I think you've actually done a better job of the lighting that I did. Great work!
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We all know she respects her friends enough to at least opt for the painted underwear version instead
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Unless, that's how it naturally is for them and humans decided to start trimming beards to match the Khajiit look many, many years ago. Both options as unlikely as the other! (I'm going to stick with the dyeing option)
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I really shouldn't type when I'm tired
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@Toryu-Mau: That's no reason not to make your own version. Go forth and draw! (then show you made please)
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Were these all applied with iron-on printer printer paper, or were they printed directly onto the shirt? Either way, this must have taken a while to put together!
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It wouldn't be a classic bond style story without a bit of romance though, would it?
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He was so nice too.
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Such an effect probably has warming properties. Too much warming could possibly lead to fire. This is also Katia we're talking about. If something can go wrong, it probably will.