Sea Serpent Portrait WIP
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Sgt. Groovy
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I think the snake is great (though it could use a bit more contrast in shading), but the problem is that the water looks more like a cloud with lightnings than water. The effect in the mermen/maid images are pretty good, I would look there for reference.
If you want the submerged parts to show through, they must be distorted by the ripples in the water, because we can't expect the water remain dead calm around the moving snake. I have been practicing with displacement maps recently, and tried something on your picture to create the distorted effect (I had to use the one with wrong texture, because it
was the only one without water).
The first picture shows only the underwater parts, no reflections in the water surface. In the second one, I tried to make some reflections by creating a mirror image of the above surface parts, and distorting that by the same displacement map. The picture got pretty messy, though, and the whole approach is probably too 'realistic' for a cartoonish picture.
(NOTE: this is supposed only to be a proof (or disproof) of concept, the real image with this method should be done in larger size to get smoother results).
If you want the submerged parts to show through, they must be distorted by the ripples in the water, because we can't expect the water remain dead calm around the moving snake. I have been practicing with displacement maps recently, and tried something on your picture to create the distorted effect (I had to use the one with wrong texture, because it
was the only one without water).
The first picture shows only the underwater parts, no reflections in the water surface. In the second one, I tried to make some reflections by creating a mirror image of the above surface parts, and distorting that by the same displacement map. The picture got pretty messy, though, and the whole approach is probably too 'realistic' for a cartoonish picture.
(NOTE: this is supposed only to be a proof (or disproof) of concept, the real image with this method should be done in larger size to get smoother results).
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- sea_serpent2.png (86.45 KiB) Viewed 4612 times
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- sea_serpent1.png (78.79 KiB) Viewed 4612 times
Anyway, if this effect is included in the final portrait somehow, it would be nice to have it applied to the existing mermen portraits as well.
One note is that you'll have to remove the pixelation from the reflection, it may be distorted, but it should still be smooth.
Aside from that it's really nice, if the bottom half of the background was made to be blue instead of black, or more of a blue tinge to it would make it better (When I saw it first it took a couple of seconds for what it was to sink in, this would help with that)
Aside from that it's really nice, if the bottom half of the background was made to be blue instead of black, or more of a blue tinge to it would make it better (When I saw it first it took a couple of seconds for what it was to sink in, this would help with that)
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Sgt. Groovy
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A bit of blue in the water, and smoothened reflection (the displacement map tool of GIMP doesn't have much in the way of antialiasing, the pictures tend to get grainy. It helps some to make the images in larger size and then scale down. My modifications were made to the original small size).
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- sea_serpent3.png (90.13 KiB) Viewed 4533 times
I meant going over it with the paintbrush tool and doing it manually, which wouldn't be too hard to do, although timeconsuming (well, at least for me, but that's only because I have a tablet, if you don't have one then it would be harder)Sgt. Groovy wrote:A bit of blue in the water, and smoothened reflection (the displacement map tool of GIMP doesn't have much in the way of antialiasing, the pictures tend to get grainy. It helps some to make the images in larger size and then scale down. My modifications were made to the original small size).
EDIT: BTW, where in GIMP can you do displacement maps, I didn't realise that you could, I thought that you had done this in photoshop.
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Sgt. Groovy
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Sgt. Groovy
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Kestenvarn
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The water line still doesn't curve properly around his chest.-
Sgt. Groovy
- Art Contributor
- Posts: 1471
- Joined: May 22nd, 2006, 9:15 pm
- Location: Helsinki