SardonicSamurai's art Reviews on Newgrounds

[Angel Named Billy]

Heavy looking for Medic.

I'm sure you'll have many more seeing the resemblance, haha

[Joy 14]

Truth

I work with 3 women that are exactly like this. Try to help them and they get pissed. Don't help them and they get pissed.

This gave me a good chuckle, and for that I think you my good sir.

[Look at what you've BECOME!]

I totally want that hair style

I've always loved your style. I agree with Krinkels on how he feels about the contrast.

Also penis.

[Redhead]

Me likey vury mush

I now want to play Perfect Dark. The original, not the crappy 360 version.

Not that I'm saying this character looks slightly like Joanna from that game. Nope.

[Terran Medic - Making of]

Wow; that's Amazing!

I saw this on Deviant Art awhile back and loved it there; so I definitely love it here too, haha! I'm a huge Starcraft fan; so when I saw this on the front page, I had a big 'ol smile on my face.

I have to ask though; what kind of brushes are you using for her face? Her lips look amazingly well done, and I love the coloring. Any extra install brushes or a certain grouping you use? Keep up the great work!

Vonschlippe responds:

I'm glad someone asked this question!

I used mostly basic photoshop brushes, although I do sometimes create my own. To obtain skin texture, I usually cross a textured/dirty brush (the default ones) with a basic hard brush, then modify the spacing so it recreates the kind of pattern you see in the first frame. To obtain realistic skin, I usually follow certain rules:
-I usually start with one basic color in the background (a "flat color"), and I work over it using a LOT of semi-transparent brush strokes (sometimes until you don't even see the flat color layer anymore, such as in this drawing). While this is terrible for stroke economy and time-saving, it removes the problem of many artists painting skin, that is too much contrast on low-contrast zones, such as cheeks. You will get smooth skin with a brush that uses pen pressure set to opacity and reducing to 25% the global opacity on the brush.
-applying textured brushes works best in high-contrast zones, as it is when light is shining parallel to the skin that bumps/texture appear most. As you can see in the first frame, the texture on the cheeks is inappropriate and does not make the face look smooth. However it works well around the nose and lips. I fixed it in the next frames.
-to remove the "plastic" feel of digitally painted skin (very common problem), I apply 2 separate overlays to the skin in order to enhance realism: one is an "overlay" mode layer consisting of blemishes, skin spots, freckles, rinkles, hairs, and so on. The other one is another "overlay" this time consisting entirely of Gaussian noise, of variable intensity. Noise helps break down the monotony of a gradiant into something more gritty - it's used a lot in cinematic trailers to fool the eye into making the image more realistic.
-I don't bother with lighting/mood when I'm painting skin. I always make the face beige with white, standard lighting, keeping my grays at neutral. I usually modify the lighting in subsequent layers consisting of soft lights, hard lights, pin lights and so on.
-The reflections on specular surfaces (lips, eyes, sometimes wet skin) are not done with a special brush type, but rather painted using the "dodge" tool on "highlights only" mode. This tool, for some reason, adds incredible realism to reflections because it will turn an ordinary white spot into a non-linear gradiant (that is very hard to obtain using brushes or the gradiant tool). Non linear gradiants starting from white make for better reflections than linear ones.

I hope this answers! I can't really name the brushes I use because they don't have names >_< I also don't use a standard diameter because I like to change it a lot using the flywheel on my tablet. If you have ANY further questions, feel free to ask!!

Regards,
-Nicolas Kudeljan

[Starcraft Terran Medic]

i remember seein this!

I'm a huge starcraft fan, so I DEFINITELY love it!

[Happy Thaksgeving]

*Holds up hand*

How.

[Captain-Ben_NG]

Awesome!

These always turn out amazing!

[Darkness]

Wow, that's AMAZING!

I have a hard enough time drawing on a much smaller area!

Roughly how long did it take you to complete this?

ornery responds:

Lets see the toning took about 6 hours, and the drawing maybe about 12, so 18 hours total about.