Welcome to Gaia! ::

Oh wow x33. It's so lite and pretty ^^. Haha, to be quite honest, I kinda like the sketchy-ness Ou<. It gives the picture a breezy and refreshing atmosphere :33

WATCH OUT, BOKO, THAT MOOGLE'S ABOUT TO CAST FIRAGA ON YOU.

sweatdrop Hahaha, does this stamp make me look fat? XD *huggles Mizu* You're such a darling! But I think my skills would need to improve to match everyone else on here.

Nuu, my (lack of) talent! Mizu has run off with it! ;_;

Well, I figured I might as well show off my incomplete Moggie and Enyb thing. Moggie's just a white blob right now, so I hid those layers, but here's the incomplete Enyb. I still need to finish the feathers and add shadows/texture. ^^;;; I'm still trying to discover how to do this stuff, so please bear with me through my experimentation.
Colored, unfinished Enyb

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF SOMEONE'S DRAWING ENYB HUZZAZZLE

OMIGOD I TAKE THAT BACK.

I PREFER THE COLOURED VERSION.

CHIKA YOU ARE SO AWESOME. YOU DID AN AMAZING JOB WITH THE SHADING ON THE FEET AND BEAK.

What program did you use?

To answer your question, Rio, I did this in Photoshop Elements, which was the only thing I could get my hands on for free since my aunt lent it to me. But I'd love to have regular photoshop, since Elements lacks a lot of things that are particularly useful for coloring. =_=


And for your question, Mizu: Long story short---the blending was all done on one layer. I hope to get an equally nice look on the feathers too, once I get around to them. But it takes me such a long time to do it, because I did all of the shading and blending and dodging on the same layer.

Long story long: I actually have a lot of layers going on---one was the basic sketch, then another with the image drawn better in a color slightly darker than the fill I'm going to use (so I have a nice outline to work inside), then a layer where I just filled in the green, and another one for the beak and feet---but it all starts to get boiled down to fewer and fewer layers. (Moggie has a ton of layers to her right now, for instance.) I started off with the beak on a totally separate layer (as well as the inside of the mouth on its own layer too), a nice, solid orange color. Then I just dodged the hell out of it. XD I then merged the beak with the layer of the color outline, which adds that bit of definition to the edge of the beak.

However, the feet were a little harder, and I needed to merge the outline with the fill color early on to blend the transitions between ridges to get it more natural-looking, so in addition to dodging I often had to go back in and re-add the darker color, or I'd blend in some black.

I know there's got to be an easier way to do this, but this was the only way I knew how to get what I wanted. XD Although, if I worked with colors in different layers, I'm sure I'd get more definition and a different look to the piece, but it's a technique that I have yet to learn. As it's turning out, I think the end result will look a little more like a painting than, say, line art with color. Ah, well, I'm no artist. But I AM looking for help and critique so I can improve!

So I was totally feeling inspirational after a friend on here gave me a sh*t-ton of stuff, just out of the kindness of his heart. I thought I'd return the favor by doing some crappy drawings at 6am.