[Whitesock]

I already did.

[Max Payne]

Alright at the expense of sounding really stupid here I'll just ask. This is a great tutorial but is there any way without a tablet thing (which i'm not even sure there are in Canada) to draw a good circle? All of mine from the first sketch are misshapen and lumpy rather then what your first sketches head looked like/ (and the effect wasn't meant to be misshapen or lumpy in my case)

[Gargoyle]

Holding down the shift key while making an elliptical selection will make your selection circular. You can then stroke the selection with the airbrush tool.

[Griatch]

@Max Payne

As Gargoyle said, there are ways to make perfect circles. I would recommend trying free-hand too though. It's not easy to draw a circle with the mouse -- this is definately a matter of training, but it can be done. A hint is to zoom in and draw only small parts of the circle at a time. Zooming will help up your mouse resolution relative to the picture and also allow you to move the mouse a shorter stretch. The result will probably still not be a perfect circle, but it retains that "hand drawn" feel of your work (something which is lost if you suddenly have a perfect circle in there) and it's nevertheless a useful technique to learn for many types of complex shapes.
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Griatch

[niteflite]

thats porbably one of the most amazing things i have EVER seen
u do what i never knew was possible, your awesome ...just wow..did u develop gimp or something? lol

[mlv]

This tutorial is wonderfull! I would like to try this myself, as i have been given a wacom graphics tablet for christmas. Though i have not a clue how to get the drivers working, i have downloaded the code from the wacom linux project and compiled them, but i dont know what to do now :s:. I'm on a 866 mhz PCLinuxOS 2006 box running XFCE. This is because my fast 2500+ Debian etch (Can't have enough debian users, eh?) box with some NVidia card is malfunctioning. Please help and thanks already :h:

[Clark~]

Dude.. Thats awesome! :O

[Griatch]

@mlv

Under debian there is pretty decent support for Wacom tablets already -- at least for the later stock kernels, like 2.6.15 and upwards. These days I don't even compile the modules like I had to, the wacom-tools package and the wacom-driver packages (if my memory serves me right, I'm away from my workstation right now), is just to install and run.

I don't know PCPlinuxBox, nor have I experience with XFCE, but assuming you have the driver running and the kernel module installed properly (self-installed or with the kernel already), you should be able to check that the tablet is recogniced by doing

dmesg | grep 'wacom' 

You should see your tablet recogniced by name and all. If so, become root and go into /dev/inputs and do

xxd eventX

where X is the number of the various event units you find in this directory. Run xxd for the various events and move your mouse, keyboard, tablet etc until you find which of the events is linked to your tablet. There are special tools in the wacomtools-package that examines these event threads better, showing that the tablet is really sending tilt, pressure info and so on. Look at the linuxwacom homepage for details.

If this all checks out, the hardware is installed correctly, and you just have to tell your X-server to load the driver and assign units to your pen tip, eraser and whatever it is you have on your tablet. Not until then will GIMP know there's something there. Go into /etc/X11/XFree86-4.conf , /etc/X11/xorg.conf or whatever name your X-server config file has. Refer to the Linuxwacom homepage to add the appropriate lines of code to create the extra units you need (you'll need stylus, eraser at least, probably cursor and buttons too).

This is all outlined in the documentation on Linuxwacom (first hit you get in Google), so just follow those steps and it should work. The hardware installation (drivers and kernel module) is the most opaque, once you're sure that worked, it's mostly a matter of tweaking. There could be an issue with unplugging/reconnecting the USB socket; so if the tablet stops working after doing that, consider not unplugging it after the computer has booted. Restarting the X-server (Ctrl-Alt-Backspace in most windows managers) will also re-detect the tablet if you loose it. I had more problems with this in the past though; these days it's rock steady, I run with a stock 2.6.15 kernel and under Debian testing and KDE it works right out of the box with my Wacom Intuous 3.

Good luck!
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Griatch

[Gus]

I'm currently having the same problem as Whitesock.

EDIT: Aha! untill now I've been selecting the brush with my mouse, you need to select the brush with the pen in order for it to work.

Gus.

[mlv]

Thank you very much for you help Griatch, my graphire 4 works wonderfully now and i will probably soon try out your tutorials. I have read the other ones and i really admire you, especially your other work on DA is amazing. Cheers!

[Griatch]

@Gus

Glad it worked out.:-)

@mlv

Thanks for the kind words! Looking forward to seeing you try out some stuff with the graphire. It's a lovely little board.
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Griatch

[-josh-]

I couldnt be botherd doin a background >.> Its in a total different style to yours xD hope you dont mind

[Griatch]

-josh-

Right! Thanks for trying this out! Sure, it's a very different style, but the point of the tutorial is not to make something identical but to be inspired/get ideas by the workflow presented. This is a more "comic/manga" style, leaving the black oulines to see, as well as making her face with big eyes, small mouth etc. Overall, I like the pose and the shading you have done on her exposed skin. Anatomy is also decent, the hands look like they lack thumbs, but overall she has comic-character proportions, which fits her! Good job!

If I may come with some suggestions, would suggest working down the thickness of those black lines a bit. If they were done on a separate layer you can for example take the eraser tool to them at high zoom to thin them down (try to use long strokes to make lines smooth). It's slow work, but you'll see the result becoms neatly "hand drawn", with thin lines having smooth varying thickness here and there. Another (probably easier) alternative is to simply make a new layer between the colour and the old black outlines, lower opacity of colour very much layer, lower opacity of outline layer a little less, and redraw the lines on the new layer, with a smaller brush. You might have to erase or add overshooting colour afterwards though.

I like the character, and her "sighing" expression :-) Good job for a first try! I'll put up this version in the top post. :-D
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Griatch

[-josh-]

THANKS : D

I found it hard since I used a mouse :3
When I get a scanner you can see some of me real good drawings xD

[DRArtist809]

holy damn that is a great digi painting... I have to build up the paitence to do that well :P

[Xelar]

i haven`t finished it yet, but I am proud of it :l:

[Griatch]

@Xelar

And you should be -- proud of it, I mean! Great job, excellent brush techniques and blending. Love those subtle hues of her skin, that looks very realistic. I'm particularily impressed by her nostrils -- that looks like a photograph. Was this done from with a reference or from pure imagination? Either way it's wonderful!

I think this composition looks very good as it is, the way only parts of her is seen has a real surreal feeling about it. I'll put this version up at the op, and will put up the next version too when you're done with it.

Excellent work.
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Griatch

[budman]

Another great tutorial - thanks for the tips.
You've really opened up gimp for me. Here I only thought it was good for minimal art and photo editing.
Wow..

I was just playing around.. drawing stick figures, when I remembered a little cartoon I used to draw in the late-80's...
I laughed when I remembered the name... 'Gimpy' LOL
No idea why I called it that... the girls in the office always wanted me to draw it, so Instead of just the face, I drew it in different poses and scenes... Him wearing the jacket from Saturday night Fever, and then with a fake curly mustache cracked people up. I had a few others, but they were lost over time and moves. Bummer.. I'll have to try and remember them.



My wife thanks you - doing this has sparked an interest in me sketching again. I picked up some pencils and better sketch tablet and started drawing horses. I did a unicorn years ago.. someone stole it from one of my tablets. That still urks me to this day. If they asked, I probably would have given it to them. Oh well.. :)

I found laying down the dark color first with the highest opacity, then as I bring in lighter colors, I reduce the opacity. It really blends nice. Then I use the smudge tool with about 60-70% opacity - the mountain and lava were done with it. The teeth were done with just the air brush. Even the eyes, which I think took me just as long as the mountain, were done using airbrush only. no gradient fills. :)

Hope you like. :)
Thanks again!

Rich

[newt]

@budman
Nice, I like it
Looks like Barney, and Dino's love child- cept it's eye's would have to be reeeaallly crazy looking.

[Griatch]

@budman

You're welcome, I'm glad to hear interest can be sparked for using GIMP for more extensive projects.

Horses and unicorns are something I didn't learn to draw until very recently. It's fun to do -- and the chicks love it. ;-)

"Gimpy", huh? Fun character -- even if he he looks completely insane with those crazed big eyes! I like the tongue and the shading you have done on him, that's really nice work. You have aimed for a "cartoony" colour palette (with bright, clean colours) which fits the subject well I think. An idea would be to work with even smaller brushes here and there, to make some things sharper, like the edge of the volcano against the sky. A blurry outline works if you're aiming for realism, but with a toon-type picture such as this I think some subtle sharpness here and there won't deviate from the impression. The tongue is a place were you did this very well.

This tutorial is about getting inspired to create your own characters, and to flesh them out using GIMP, and you have certainly done this to a big extent! Good work.

I'll be putting this up at the top. Looking forward to seeing that saturday night fever version some time. ;-)
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Griatch