[Wip] guy with sword

[Chainsy]

Don't ask about the ce advertisements, I'm still doing them, I just wanted to get some practice in on something more creative.
Basically this is a character Ive been designing on paper and in mind for over a year. I decided today I would paint him onto photoshop and finally see him in real color. I'm going to show stages as it goes through, which can also be helpful to someone who wants to learn painting/ skinning.
First off I just do a quick 2 second sketch of how his stance will be, and this will also keep my proportions correct. So after this is done, I open up a new layer, and paint in the outlines for the arm, around what we shall now call "the skeleton" as it acts as a basis for how the muscles and body will be placed. We simply color in the arm with a neutral grey (which is for rgb: 125 setting for all of them.) After this , I grab s lightly lighter color and with a blurred brush I go over what would be the lighted area, I do the exact same thing with a slightly dark brush. I then do touch ups with some dodge and burn, and then add shades of coloring and use the eraser and blur tool as I see fit. I then have a jagged outline for the arm, and I grab 25 px blurred eraser, and go along the edges. This how far I am now and soon Ill add small details like stretch marks, and veins. Heres what I have so far:
http://img169.imageshack.us/img169/7357/swordymancopyrv4.jpg

[Heathen]

Looks horribly unnatural.

[Chainsy]

D: how?

[Roostervier]

His pose is awkward. Not only can I not figure out which leg is in front of the other, but even if I switched which one is in front, that pose still makes no sense at all.

[Chainsy]

Oh that, do not mind the skeleton right now, I want opinions on how to get my overall painting better, i can easily erase that part of the skeleton as I haven't painted over it yet. Basically hes spinning, using the momentum to slice whoever the hell is in his way with the sword hell be holding in the unpainted arm. the leg that is bent is the sword arm one, and is dragging behind him as he spins, basically to use as a weight when it flings around to thrust his body forward. Which is pretty hard to imagine right now I admit.

[Anton]

Well from what I know, not many people would EVER attempt to spin around to hit in real combat. But hell, I'm an idiot and know nothing right?

Well, what I would do is have him with his right hand back... hold on, Ill sketch it for you.


http://i38.tinypic.com/bimezp.jpg

Edit: lul "FINISHI HIM"
http://t1xanton.com/Images/sword.jpg

[Chainsy]

Ok, also, this is more of futuristic times, with guns, so a guy wouldn't be normally holding a sword unless he didn't have powers of some sort, which he does. But this is basically just a dramatic pose, nothing more, the one weakness of being smart is that you give simple straightforward things such as a pose too much thought, same thing with a simple question on a test, it looks too simple, so you go over what ifs and just confuse yourself and go way too far into the whole reason of it when its just something as simple as what is 4 + 4? I guarantee if you without warning randomly put what is 4 + 4 into a reading trimester exam for IB, they will spend 30 minute son that mulling it over thinking its some kind of trick.
E: I like the idea, but then the swirl would be useless, sort of imagine a ballerina twirling, now imagine her holding a blade, now imagine it as a muscular guy with armor, now imagine him doing it at 200 mph, with debris flying everywhere. Thats who I'm drawing.

[Bastinka]

Don't you have a gallery thread?
Also try to atleast show half the concept done, it's really annoying how you always post 20% maybe less maybe more, done concepts and never seem to finish any of them.

[Chainsy]

Small update, when I mean small, I mean like, just a hand added. This part I basically did the same technique with the arms, except for the blue parts I pen tooled them in, added blur and dodging where necessary, and just overall worked it into the white so it would look better, I know right now its an eye sore with the colorful glove right next to the grey scaled arm, but I prefer to apply color to all of the skin at once.
http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/6754/swordymancopykm7.jpg

[Bad Waffle]

Don't you have a gallery thread?
Also try to atleast show half the concept done, it's really annoying how you always post 20% maybe less maybe more, done concepts and never seem to finish any of them.

You should stop being so mean to the bloody kid, otherwise nobody will never like eachother. He doesnt need a gallery thread for a WIP topic, the whole purpose of this forum is to allow people space to post and get specifc updates on what they're doing.


But i have to agree with silent wind, you should block out the muscle structure of the entire picture first. Do it in a layer separate, of course.

[Chainsy]

Only his arm and lower face are exposed, hell be wearing clothes, so thats mainly all the bare muscle you'll see, but yes I do understand. I'm also redoing all the major flaws of the pose, to make it look better.

[Bad Waffle]

no, i think the post is great. I didnt mean chunk out the muscle. i meant chunk out the ENTIRE IMAGE. block in your clothes, your face, hair, background, etc etc. What you have now is only half of that.

[Chainsy]

Oh ok, got it.

[OmegaDragon]

To me it looks like he's about to chop off his own arm >.>
Unless I'm looking at it from a different point of view; it may be that the arm and the sword locations are in the same place as if it where about to strike downward to something, but if you look at it like that, the leg position would be kinda unnatural the way he is facing (or the way I believe he is facing o.o) Perhaps I will wait to find out where you are going with this.

[Chainsy]

Or read and figure out that I already changed the pose along time ago. :)

[OmegaDragon]

Didn't see that part, must have missed it since it was 4 AM when i replied >.<

[Hunter]

I'm liking it.

[Con]

Just keep going with it. Rough out the whole body then procedurally add detail and shading in steps.