(I'm not sure what forum to stick this in, thought about Guides but I wasn't sure. Feel free to move this!)
Okay then people wanted to see how I did Crystal so I thought it would be fun to share! Sit down, buckle up, and get ready for the wildest, most badly explained ride of your life!
For starters I use Krita, which is a free photoshop clone. I'm not really sure how my methods would work in anything else but I feel like it shouldn't be too difficult to do or reproduce!
Firstly you need to grab your sparkly masterpiece of a dragon. For this I scried up this beautiful boy:
(Don't worry, I'll do the Facet later)
Using a palette docker I snagged the hex codes of most of the colors by placing the browser window and the program window side by side to form my palette:
The last three are colors for the dragon's (Let's call him Ron) belly, since they differentiate a bit.
I drew Ron's lovely face in some lines so he's ready to color:
(don't steal this lineart by the way.)
Now we're ready to get started. Check out your dragon a bit and determine a base color; it's gonna be whatever color you grabbed that's visually centered between your darkest and lightest, most likely. I habitually use a lot of layers so I started off with just Ron's head. (Don't ask why I excluded the snout and ear. I'm not sure. I do it later in the tutorial)
When you've got that all done and prettied up it's time to determine a light source! I went with above and facing since that's easy. For me it's a bit hard to do Crystal without doing some sort of shading.
Now it's time to enter Triangle Hell!
With your next lightest color add a bunch of triangles. You don't have to limit it to just triangles, I use a few four and five-sided polygons. Though there is a bit of randomness to it, I try to pack them in a little more densely in places where the light would hit brighter, like on the brows and in front of the nose. You don't want to completely smother your base color in these, but cover a majority of it.
Continue with your triangles with lighter and darker colors, keeping the shape and contour of your dragon's head in mind. As the colors get lighter, make your shapes fewer and farther between. Notice how I didn't restrict the dark colors to just shadowed places on Ron's face; it will come out looking a little less bright that way.
Since it looks pretty cruddy now, here's the Most Important Step, and also The Step I'm Not Sure Would Work In Other Programs: The big smudge. To achieve the fractal light look, I get a non-textured smudge brush and size it up so that Ron's head is well covered. With the strength at 100 I go ahead and smudge the colors in the direction of the light source.
Admittedly it still looks a little bit messy, but at least the hard part's over! Now I grab an airbrush and set it to med-low opacity, and brush in some smoother shading using Lighten and Darken modes, respectively. To achieve more depth I go over my spots a few more times so it's not just one flat color. I also throw in some extra bits of color at a lowered opacity. You can study your dragon to see what colors to use, but for Ron I used yellow.
Now move onto the main body and repeat the steps! Generally I use longer and thinner shapes on noodly parts of the body, so it appears more smooth. Like a noodle.
Now we move onto Ron's belly. With his primary color, Watermelon, the belly color differs quite a bit, so I started with a darker base color. There are other colors that you can do the belly at the same time as the back of the neck, or others that are lighter probably.
Enter Triangle Hell again but keep these more constricted and less random. The darker shapes tend to go towards the back while the lighter is one or two big triangles. Leave a bit of a border of your base color around the edges. Smudge, then airbrush your shades on; I noticed there were less specks of color on his belly so I kept the yellow to a minimum.
Now we move onto the horn; Imperial horns have what looks like mostly equilateral triangles for their facets, so keeping the triangles small and evenly sized I cover up my base. I also got around to doing the ears and nose here, but it's the same principal as everything else. Somehow I didn't get a screenshot for this one, but here's the base:
I add some finalizing shading and then Voila! Your Crystallized Ron is finished! Except for the Facet. The Facet is.... absent. I'll get around to that.
Hope you enjoyed!! :>
@DumbJello @Giraffes @Baelfin @Kivetre
EDIT: If you'd like to be pinged when I post the Facet part let me know :ooo
Okay then people wanted to see how I did Crystal so I thought it would be fun to share! Sit down, buckle up, and get ready for the wildest, most badly explained ride of your life!
For starters I use Krita, which is a free photoshop clone. I'm not really sure how my methods would work in anything else but I feel like it shouldn't be too difficult to do or reproduce!
Firstly you need to grab your sparkly masterpiece of a dragon. For this I scried up this beautiful boy:
(Don't worry, I'll do the Facet later)
Using a palette docker I snagged the hex codes of most of the colors by placing the browser window and the program window side by side to form my palette:
The last three are colors for the dragon's (Let's call him Ron) belly, since they differentiate a bit.
I drew Ron's lovely face in some lines so he's ready to color:
(don't steal this lineart by the way.)
Now we're ready to get started. Check out your dragon a bit and determine a base color; it's gonna be whatever color you grabbed that's visually centered between your darkest and lightest, most likely. I habitually use a lot of layers so I started off with just Ron's head. (Don't ask why I excluded the snout and ear. I'm not sure. I do it later in the tutorial)
When you've got that all done and prettied up it's time to determine a light source! I went with above and facing since that's easy. For me it's a bit hard to do Crystal without doing some sort of shading.
Now it's time to enter Triangle Hell!
With your next lightest color add a bunch of triangles. You don't have to limit it to just triangles, I use a few four and five-sided polygons. Though there is a bit of randomness to it, I try to pack them in a little more densely in places where the light would hit brighter, like on the brows and in front of the nose. You don't want to completely smother your base color in these, but cover a majority of it.
Continue with your triangles with lighter and darker colors, keeping the shape and contour of your dragon's head in mind. As the colors get lighter, make your shapes fewer and farther between. Notice how I didn't restrict the dark colors to just shadowed places on Ron's face; it will come out looking a little less bright that way.
Since it looks pretty cruddy now, here's the Most Important Step, and also The Step I'm Not Sure Would Work In Other Programs: The big smudge. To achieve the fractal light look, I get a non-textured smudge brush and size it up so that Ron's head is well covered. With the strength at 100 I go ahead and smudge the colors in the direction of the light source.
Admittedly it still looks a little bit messy, but at least the hard part's over! Now I grab an airbrush and set it to med-low opacity, and brush in some smoother shading using Lighten and Darken modes, respectively. To achieve more depth I go over my spots a few more times so it's not just one flat color. I also throw in some extra bits of color at a lowered opacity. You can study your dragon to see what colors to use, but for Ron I used yellow.
Now move onto the main body and repeat the steps! Generally I use longer and thinner shapes on noodly parts of the body, so it appears more smooth. Like a noodle.
Now we move onto Ron's belly. With his primary color, Watermelon, the belly color differs quite a bit, so I started with a darker base color. There are other colors that you can do the belly at the same time as the back of the neck, or others that are lighter probably.
Enter Triangle Hell again but keep these more constricted and less random. The darker shapes tend to go towards the back while the lighter is one or two big triangles. Leave a bit of a border of your base color around the edges. Smudge, then airbrush your shades on; I noticed there were less specks of color on his belly so I kept the yellow to a minimum.
Now we move onto the horn; Imperial horns have what looks like mostly equilateral triangles for their facets, so keeping the triangles small and evenly sized I cover up my base. I also got around to doing the ears and nose here, but it's the same principal as everything else. Somehow I didn't get a screenshot for this one, but here's the base:
I add some finalizing shading and then Voila! Your Crystallized Ron is finished! Except for the Facet. The Facet is.... absent. I'll get around to that.
Hope you enjoyed!! :>
@DumbJello @Giraffes @Baelfin @Kivetre
EDIT: If you'd like to be pinged when I post the Facet part let me know :ooo
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