Flame

Mercy

Member since: 2007
Location
Wellington

A Miraluka Jedi falling to the dark side.
Original request HERE.

Comments

Mercy

P.S.
This is just the initial sketch so far. I'm not 100% happy with it but I think with colour and lighting/shadow it will be what I want. Or I KILL it!

Lord Crumb

Miraluka's to the left of me, Miraluka's to the right of me and I still can not see a thing.
It's a bad blind joke I know. I have a warped sense of humor at times.
Judging by your past artwork it will be another masterpiece by you.

-LC

Mercy

Ha ha! Yeah, I like me them Miralukas. Not to mention the nearly naked guy...

Anyway, here's the coloured and shaded version.

SilverLightsaber

Er, actually, excuse me for saying so, but may I dare to ask why he only has a robe on the lower part of him? I know it's rather embarrassing, and I mean no offense, but I simply would like to know.

Thanks again for taking the time & effort to draw him in the first place :P,

SilverLightsaber

Mercy

Well, they were just pants and I wasn't gonna bother putting the details in cause the shading would render it pointless. I just wanted to do a torso pic with the lighting and such. I guess I saw this one quite clearly when I began it.
I could probably run something through that was a little more clothed, if you like...

CCR

the lighting looks really intense now, which is good. I would make the flames more bright, with some orange and yellows though... Unless I misunderstand about what is emanating from his hand?

Mercy

Y'know, I agree CCR. Here's the updated pic and if all is well I'll post it to gallery. Thanks all!

Mercy

Oh, Silver - let me know if you want me to send you a copy via email. PM me your address and I'll flick it through.

CCR

I don't want to nitpick, but it's still not as bright as it realistically should be. Don't let me interfere with your vision, but a flame or other lightsource should really "pop". Look at a lighter's flame in a dark room, and you'll see what I mean.

Don't be afraid to throw down some solid bright yellows and orange tones. If it looks too hard, you can soften the edges with smudge or the blur tool. After that, I would use a large soft round brush with low opacity (maybe like 10%) with a bright yellow-orange selected. With maybe one pass, just dotted over the flame area, you should achieve a nice glow effect.

Anyway, that's just what *I* would do, and if it's not what *you* would do, then that's okay too. Artistic License gives us freedom to do as we please with our own art.

Eclipse

Mercy,

Ok, so this is more of what I think CCR is talking about here... Mercy's Flame. The techniques are stupidly simple, you see I didn't even need your PSD to do this. With the psd you have a finer level of control though.

All this is is a feathered selection around your flame and hand, and then I copied the hand onto a new layer and screened it over the original (for brightness) and then I altered the color with an adjustment layer.

From there I wanted the skin to match so I selected the highlighted portion of the chest, selected similar from the select menu... did it again (this is sort of like growing a selection) and then I feathered, copied, and made a screen and and overlay layer. Very simple and straight forward, took about 3 minutes. You can really make stuff pop with the screen layer blending. Check it out and have some fun.

Eclipse

Mercy

Wow! Amazing how different it looks!
Okay, so I'm a bit more tentative when it comes to lighting, I guess. I've kept it soft. Even so, I found that the actual flames lost their distinction a bit. I didn't want to push it into neon colours too much - I kinda liked the idea that this was the flame of the dark side beginning to burn within him, and I didn't want to make it too overwhelming, I guess. I dunno.
I do like the effect it's had on his hand, though. It looks like it's actually burning around his hand rather than just behind it - which had bugged me a bit.

I still can't get it to look as striking as your effort, Eclipse. Maybe I'm just being too precious with it. Thanks to you both for the help on this one. I guess I need pushing sometimes. Let me know what you think of the new one, and if you think I should push it a bit more...

P.S. One last question - and I realise my ignorance is totally showing here - What's a PSD?

Eclipse

PSD... sorry I made an assumption, and maybe it was wrong. I assumed you were working inside of photoshop, which its default file type is PSD (with all the layers and such).

I think your new one is looking much better. It's not as vibrant as mine, but I was trying to make it REALLY vibrant to make a point. I think yours is looking really good. You might bring up the highlights on his body to match, but this is a definite improvement.

Eclipse

CCR

We all need pushing sometimes! Don't be afraid to try new things, that's the beauty of working with computers! You can save a "safe" copy, and then go nuts with an alternate one just to play with effects.

I think your most recent version is the best one so far, but I was operating on the assumptionn that it was supposed to be a "normal" flame spontaneously igniting in the guy's hand. But if it's supposed to be "twisted", and part of the dark side, then your most recent incarnation definitely fits. Like I said before, it's all about how you envision it. Of course, if you want to really make it plain that there's something unnatural about this flame (aside from the fact that it's self igniting in a dude's hand), you could always color it blue, or purple, and make it obvious... Though at this point, you'd have to redo alot of your already nice work... so maybe next time!

Anyway, the moral of the story is always experiment!

Mercy

Oh, of course - psd. I had thought you meant Photoshop, and yes I do use it, just wanted to clarify...

Thanks guys. Yeah, I was gonna do a version with a purple/blue flame and then never got around to it. Oh well, another time perhaps.
Love and Hugs, all!
~ Mercy.