Advice: Scarlet Spider skin

[Helix]

I have dabbled in skinning in the past...mostly for my own use. After a couple of years away from the game and an upgrade to PSP 4, I am trying to relearn what I did know and improve my limited skills at the same time. Here is an incomplete version of my first recent effort. I'd love some advice if anyone's got any regarding lighting, adding dimension, how to use layers, etc. Thank you in advance for any and all critiques.

http://s95.photobucket.com/albums/l141/helix2112/?action=view&current=ScarletSpider.jpg

[Outcast]

So far so good Helix, I think the Spider logo is pretty well done.

For advice on highlights and layers, Carravaggio made a tutorial which you can find
in the FR World wikispaces. Here's a quick link for you.http://frworld.wikispaces.com/skin+highlights+tutorial

You can also check out Murs's highlight tutorial in FRP2.http://frp.unlimited2.net/category/updates/tutorials/

[Helix]

[Randomdays]

The chest spider design is looking very good, very 3 dimensional. On my screen at least though, the face below the eyes is appearing very black and flat.

And, personal opionion, with the stomach muscles so well defined, for me its almost as if its not a suit there but a skin tone.

But that's just me.

One more thing - I looked at the rest of the skins on your photobucket page and liked a lot of them - very well done. Hopefully, if they're not posted already, they will be soon.

[Tomato]

***WARNING: TOMATO CRITIQUE INCOMING***
Please don't overreact to whatever I type, either here or in later posts. It may seem like a lot, but I'm just trying to help you out... in the end, it's up to you whether you listen to any of it or flatly ignore me.
***END WARNING***

hmmm... looking at the image, here are a few things you can/should fix without really going too crazy/in-depth on anything.

Firstly, when you're saving a screenshot of your skins, ESPECIALLY a skin with Red as a primary color, you need to adjust how much compression you're using. The whole image feels blurred, and it's very distracting when trying to critique it.

Secondly, I notice you're taking advantage of Carr's tutorial... and while I think that's great (I usually recommend it myself, tho Outcast beat me to it this time) do realize that Carr's tutorial is VERY basic. It suggests using white for all your highlights, but the reality is that using white to highlight can actually gray out your skins. Most skinners who take advantage of highlight layers use a brighter version of the color used on the skin (in this case, making the base skin a dark red and the highlights a bright red).

Thirdly... the shading on the eyes is wrong. Right now, you've got the lightest point at the bottom of the eyes, whereas the lightest point of the muscles and head is near the top (indicating the light source is above him). It's not a huge deal, but I personally would suggest redoing the shading a bit anyway, just to make the eyes less flat. Take a look at how jimmies and similar 3d objects are typically shaded... this is an ok example, though looking up "spiderman eyes" on Google gave some good examples too.

Fourth and finally (noticed this while typing up the others, last thing tho, I swear!)... there's no nice way to put this, this is the Scarlet Spider, not the Eunuch Spider. It's one of the major faults in C6's old base, but luckily there's a corrected version of it packaged in pretty much any of the "Male_Basic_TM" type meshes over on my NPI page. You'll have to swap out the feet with the old base, but otherwise it works fine.

[Helix]

Awesome! Thank you guys for your responses and critiques!

Fear not, Tomato. I'm not thin skinned. I like honesty. However:
(1) the only place I used Carr's highlight suggestion was to create some collarbones and a nose...both of which are hard to see. What I used on the red part was brightness and contrast - local tone tone mapping. It did all the work for me.
(2) the spider logo - I used the paint brush and did the highlights in gray, by hand, with no soften or smudge.
(3) yes, the eye shading is upside down...you're right. I was playing around with the spacing on the gradients but got distracted by the logo and forgot to go back and fix it. Ooops.
(4) I don't have the anatomically correct C6 base skin. But thank you for pointing me to it.
(5) I have no idea how to use layer yet at all. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Random - You're right...his face is flat and black. I'm not sure where to highlight it yet. I'll definitely play around with it though. And thank you for your compliments on my other skins.

[Tomato]

Awesome! Thank you guys for your responses and critiques!

Fear not, Tomato. I'm not thin skinned. I like honesty. However:
(1) the only place I used Carr's highlight suggestion was to create some collarbones and a nose...both of which are hard to see. What I used on the red part was brightness and contrast - local tone tone mapping. It did all the work for me.
(2) the spider logo - I used the paint brush and did the highlights in gray, by hand, with no soften or smudge.
(3) yes, the eye shading is upside down...you're right. I was playing around with the spacing on the gradients but got distracted by the logo and forgot to go back and fix it. Ooops.
(4) I don't have the anatomically correct C6 base skin. But thank you for pointing me to it.
(5) I have no idea how to use layer yet at all. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Random - You're right...his face is flat and black. I'm not sure where to highlight it yet. I'll definitely play around with it though. And thank you for your compliments on my other skins.

Ah. See, I assumed you had, because the tones were different from the last image, but I couldn't tell for sure... blasted jpg compression *shakes fist in the air*

As far as Layers go... In short, what a layer does is it allows you to layer one part of an image over another; in this case, you might have the red sections at the bottom, have another layer with the black sections, and then a third over them with your additional details like eyes and logo. By using layers, you can manipulate one segment of the skin without disrupting the other sections.

Example: You're working on Scarlet spider, and you've spent forever getting shading on and around the eye right, when suddenly you open up Ctool and realize that his left eye is lower then his right. At this point, if you're working with a single image, you have to cut out the eye, move it up, then blend the shading around the eye back in with the shading around where you've pasted it, etc. etc. On the other hand, if the eye is on a separate layer, it's no problem... moving the eye layer won't affect the shading on the face from the mask layer, so all you have to do is move it the eye up.

When I'm skinning/doing digital work, I layer like a madman... the Pancake vector I posted over in the pony thread has something like 3 layer groups, 7 vector groups and probably well over 50 individual vector layer segments if I bothered to count them all out.

Edit: As far as the mask goes... I can thoroughly sympathize with you there. Nomouth masks are hard to shade, in part because there's really no definative shape for it. My fallback plan for that type of situation is to either google references and see if that helps, or go back to the old skinning standard... steal from C6 . Now, I'm obviously kidding here, but only mostly... if I can't wrap my head around how something is supposed to look, I'll skim through some other skins to see if anyone else ran into a similar issue, and see how they worked around it. Even if you don't do exactly what they did, just getting different ideas from different places can be a big help. As long as you don't steal or trace the original work (IE: use it as a reference only) you shouldn't have any issues.

[Podmark]

this is the Scarlet Spider, not the Eunuch Spider.

This made me laugh out loud. It's a good point though, skins look much better with that uh...change.

And yes, layers, layers, layers. There are so many benefits to layers. For example easily duplicated say, an eye. Easily changing the colour of one part of the skin without affecting the rest. Easily moving something to another skin.

[Helix]

So, Tomato...is it the layering that makes your skins so smooth? I ask because mine look blocky and pixelated up close and yours don't.

[Helix]

Pod - I just use the magic wand to change specific parts of the skin while not affecting the rest of it. And I use the clone brush to move things from skin to skin. Am I doing it the caveman way? Should I be starring in a Geico commercial?

[Cyber Burn]

So, Tomato...is it the layering that makes your skins so smooth? I ask because mine look blocky and pixelated up close and yours don't.

I think that the size of the (TGA) file has something to do with that. Most of us skin at a 512 x 512 while Tomato uses 1024 x 1024. But I could be wrong.

[Tomato]

actually, many skinners skin at 1024 resolution and shrink it back down... there was one crazy period where I was using 2048, though that got kinda unwieldy.

Basically, you usually want to skin at about twice the size you'll end up at, and then shrink back down when you're done. There's a bit of a quality loss, but if you do it right your skins will still be smoother then if you use the same technique on a skin that starts out 512.

Example: I created the same basic shape at 200 pixels and 100 pixels, and then shrunk the 200px merged image down to 100px.



On the left is the image that was done at a higher resolution and then shrunken down, the right was made at that size.

For FF skins, you can use any power of 2 (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, etc.) as the skin's resolution. Some of the crazy technical people will come back and be like "well, you can also skin at this other crazy set of resolutions, but those never get used for ff anyway.

[AfghanAnt]

I don't usually give critiques especially when it comes to skinning (its so subjective if you ask me) but I think this is coming along nicely. Also what size are you skinning? I've never skin at anything higher than 512X512 because 1) no one sees that level of detail in-game (these are for playing with) and 2) file size (I like my downloads to be as small as possible).  You should definitely be using layers - they help you in ways you have not even dreamed of yet.

As for details such as smoothness, highlights, and overall style, I think that should be developed overtime. We can all tell you "use layers", "skin at the size", "do this type of highlight" etc but you should be experimenting and learning what works and looks good to you. I know of several times in the past people have commented on my work about things I consider "style" and I've had to ignore it because I skin for myself.

[Helix]

AfghanAnt - Thank you for dropping in. You're advice is greatly appreciated. I'm using Paint Shop Pro 4 and I haven't even come close to trying out all of the tools, applications, effects, etc. yet. It will just take some time. I think you hit on a very important point - the whole idea is to enjoy the creative process and make something that I'm happy with. I'm not aiming to reproduce someone else's style, just looking for a few words of wisdom. The best and most sacred things about the work that you and the other great skinners do are: (1) that it's unique and easily identifiable, and (2) you can see the love and effort put in to every single piece.

Tomato - Thank you for showing me the resolution difference That's huge! I will definitely try that.

[Tomato]

Well, to be fair, I did cheat a hair... the shape was done in vector, but I turned off the anti-alias to better showcase the effect. Technically it'll still be slightly smoother if you anti-alias and then shrink down, but you don't have to if you don't need to.

And just to tack onto what AA mentioned (I almost brought it up earlier, but didn't bother) even though it's possible to save at whatever resolution you want, it's always best to release skins at no higher than 512... saving higher than that can quickly be prohibitive not only for you, but for anyone trying to DL your skins or use them in-game. FF is a rather old game, and it's just not designed for 200 skins at crazy resolutions.

[Podmark]

Pod - I just use the magic wand to change specific parts of the skin while not affecting the rest of it. And I use the clone brush to move things from skin to skin. Am I doing it the caveman way? Should I be starring in a Geico commercial?

Yeah you definitely want to use layers. Somewhere in Paint Shop Pro there will be a button to add a new layer, you'll want to have at least a layer for each element of the skin.
For a bare bones example, if you've seen my skin of the Scarlet Spider over in my thread I have layers for:

1. the red body (with a highlight layer)
2. the black body (with a highlight layer)
3. the black mask (with a highlight layer)
4. the eye lens (duplicated for the second eye)
5. the spider logo

Those are the major layers I have for that skin. I also have "uncut" versions of any body skin, in this example the black. And the red body is complete, meaning that if I hid the black body you'd have a fully red Scarlet Spider. This is important because this week I found out that the black on Scarlet's back comes down towards the waist in a V shape with a cut out spider logo in the center. So to complete my skin I need to extend the black, duplicate the front spider logo and use it to cut out the black back. This will be relatively easy because of the way I set up my layers.

Hopefully that made some semblance of sense.

[Helix]

Pod - I'm gonna have to hop over and check out your Scarlet Spider. I wondered how many other people were working on him. Personally, I think that's the coolest costume that Marvel has pumped out in quite a while. Although, to be fair, I haven't read any comics in a long time. At any rate, thank you for the quick lesson in layering! That really helps. One last question, though: do I need to merge the layers when I'm done? Oh, and how do I switch back and forth between them as I'm working? Or does that happen automatically when a make changes to a certain part of the costume? Ok, that was more than one question. I suck at math, apparently.

Tomato - Thanks for the advice. God knows, a ridiculous amount of my hard drive space is already taken up by all of the great FF skins and meshes I've downloaded over the years. I don't need to add to my own or anyone else's burden.

[laughing paradox]

You do not need to merge the layers. You just go to Save As, choose an option (targa in this case) and it'll save conveniently in one file. You can also save all those layers as a PSD file, to be attacked at a later date.

Make good use of the different blending modes for colors.. and really take your time with the highlights.. study other skins to see what may work and what may not work and go from there.. if YOU are happy with what you created, that's all that matters. And remember, gradients are your friend. Seams always help.. and a touch of drop shadow where it's needed (where costume meets skin) never hurts. 

[Helix]

Damn you, Tomato! The non-anatomical correctness of my skin is now bugging the #$%^ out of me and I'm going to have to change it. Thanks for pointing that out! 

[Tomato]

That base has been in use for about a decade now. Trust me, each and every skinner here could probably list off about half a dozen flaws, and C6 himself would probably list a couple dozen more than we even know.

[UnfluffyBunny]

to be pedantic about texture resolution, it's all about your technique, my personal oppinion is to texture at the size you'll be using in the end, because then every individual pixel is how you want it, if you go from 1024 to 512 you're effectively removing 3 quarters of your pixels, and therefore the work you put into them, i'd personally rather concentrate on what my finished product will look like.
as for the technical aspect, shrinking will cause "bleeding", it can also tempt you to work in detail that will ultimately be lost when shrinking, examples follow:

[Helix]

Hmmmm.

Thank you, Syn. I have seen the bleeding effect you're talking about, and found it distressing. I tried working in 1024 and downsizing to 512 and that's exactly what happened. I'm having trouble with the overpixelated/grainy issue when I change colors on the base skin. I try to smooth them out with the soften brush but it takes forever and is difficult to be consistent with. Any advice?

[vamp]

Here is an excellent tutorial on how to color by Murs.