prince alexander for say

[Storm]

Darn, darn, DARN!!!!  

I was trying my hand at coloring Alex's clothes, and accidently completely erased the colorings I did of his face   .
Now you would say "Storm, How stupid can you get? don't you have backups?" so, yes, I did have backups, but managed to erase both of them (just for comparison, working on the Edgar coloring I had 12 seperate backups at different stages, the better to re-trace my mistakes )

Well, at least I can console myself with the fact that it wasn't that good anyways  

BTW - Can anyone give me tips on coloring clothes? Say?  
What color scheme you think would fit Alex?

[Yonkey]

   That sucks you lost the file Storm!   The Alex you did is really amazing!  Well, at least you can work from the file u uploaded here.  

[Jeysie]

What color scheme you think would fit Alex?

Hmm.

I thought the green and yellow of his KQ6 clothes suited him well enough. The particular outfit he's wearing in the sketch, though, suggests to me white with either red and/or royal blue highlights, and brown or black pants and belt. That's just my take on the matter, though. After all, there's a reason why my pants and boots are black... it gives me a means to hide my lousy color matching skills.

Peace & Luv, Liz

[Say]

ok, now to Storm's comments

oh my, yes dark hair its always the most difficult one! wtf, so annoying its so hard to get GOOD shades and sort of like a good texture when you work with such hard tones without making it look sort of fake, so yeah you did excellent trying to use some dark browns it does shows texture yet its not so dark so we can see, and it does looks black, thats so freaking annoying to work with dark hairs

about clothes, yikes, well same technique, adapt base color and then go ahead with your shades and lights, first the shades, its so much easyer, and then the lights, the folds are so very much important to take care of, specially to adapt the lights, even more than the shades!, because usually you when work on clothes tend to like.. whats the name? sort of like depend more on textures than lighting perse, so the light should go as the texture should be like, for example if its silky, of course it should be shiny, if its cotton for example there should be a bit mild, the rest from there the shading works exactly as the same it would on any object, and same as the lighting it goes hand by hand with the "supposed" texture of the clothing, anyhow, another important tip you may color alexander AS YOU LIKE, you can play with the saturation scale as well as the coloring layer stuff, for example you can color the entire suit one way and you can totally adapt it new color with the same technique done, if you would be interested to know how to do this let me know, I can guide you and tell you where these tools are, I so dont remember right now ;p its on image and then saturation I guess I'll go check and post how later if you want me to

[Jeysie]

Hmm. Thanks for the thoughts, Say.

I figured it was just a talent that one needed to develop. I'm thinking I may just have to stick to my usual cartoony "minimal shading" style, then. I'm usually good at drawing what I see, except for shading. For some reason I can just never get it to match what my eye sees. I can see that it's off, but I can never figure out how to fix it. My roomie, of course, never seems to have those issues, darn him.

My other big problem is proportion, but there is a sort of straight mathematical base one can work from for that, so I think I can fix that eventually. Unfortunately shading seems to be a bit more subjective. Proof that logical, methodical thinkers aren't very good at being really creative. (Or at least, not when there isn't a straightforward way to fake a skill you don't have.)

Anyhoo. I'll just bow out and let you colorist-skill-enabled types work your magic here.

Peace & Luv, Liz

[Say]

I do remember when I was learning how to do it, it is not easy and it did take me a while to quite catch little details, as I very well should admit how hard it is to copy reality and even more to improve it, by coloring only that is, in 3d I believe its easier because you do work more by method, you do your texture, you work figures in a x-y-z mode which allows you to control so much more proportions, and you can render and apply lights in a very different way more than do it by hand, well I'm not a 3d developer myself but I do believe to do 2d takes skills so its not easy, it just takes time and a lot fo willing to do it because hahaha its so annoying when at first it wont come out you feel like giving up and what for , but it is rewarding when you do actually do something nice

I suggest keep on trying, get a photograph and get a sketch to color, a GOOD sketch takes even professionals a month (no kidding) to finish a good very detailed artwork, so just take a bit of time, and give it a try, maybe dont commit a month but when you do manage to do something good you would like you will try to be willing to give more time to it

Anyways, my two cents on it

[Storm]

I thought the green and yellow of his KQ6 clothes suited him well enough. The particular outfit he's wearing in the sketch, though, suggests to me white with either red and/or royal blue highlights, and brown or black pants and belt.

I also thought the Alex's shirt should be white... but I think I'll go with the green & yellow "classic" -  I'm just not ready to start coloring things white yet  

[Rosedragon]

I really like Storm's pic of Alex, she did a good job coloring him. He looks sexy.   I've got some pictures of him hand drawn and colored with colored pencil and oil pastels in my gallery.

[Storm]

Thanks Dragonstar!!  

I would have kept on working on him, but I accidently erased the original file... stupid me