Drawing your skin/accent (tips and tricks!)
I'm not going to get into all of "how to draw" - proportions and color theory and use of shapes and all that - because that could essentially be an entire Fine Arts degree all on its own. But I do have a few skin/accent specific tips and tricks!
Coloring just one part of the dragon
Say you want to make an accent that adds a pattern to a Vielspun's pretty, pretty hair. You
could carefully trace around the inner lines of the dragon's mane, being careful not to let your design spill over onto the dragon's body, and that
would work just fine...
...
or you could make life easier on yourself, and make use of the Skin Parts guidelines!
See, in the Skin Parts folder, some of the basic areas of the dragon - like wings, fur, belly - are separated into different layers. All you've got to do is
find the one you want (in this case, "fur"),
hold down the ctrl key, and click on the thumnail...
... then scroll back up to your "Accent Layers" folder,
select the layer you want to use, and click the "new layer mask" icon.
Now you can draw on this layer, and whatever you draw will always stay within the bounds of the fur.
Changing the shading color
As per the
Skins and Accents Rules, you may not erase any part of the line art and shadows. But that doesn't mean you can't modify them at all! Changing the color of the line art and shadows is permitted,
as long as they remain notably darker than the colors underneath.
The "Linework Clip" and "Shadow Clip" layers should be set to "Preserve Opacity" by default, so you should be able to color directly on them without messing up the lines.
By default, the Linework layer usually has its blending mode set to "Normal," but I often find it useful to set it to "Multiply" instead; since multiply layers always make things darker - never lighter - it may take some fiddling to make sure it's dark
enough, but you can at least be sure it won't be
lighter than the background color!
You can also use different colors for different parts of the image - in the example above, I used blue shadows on the green star, but pink/brown shadows on the yellow and orange stars. Whatever looks best.
Anatomy alterations
There are a lot of cool effects that can be achieved by making it look like part of the dragon is missing! Here are some examples of ways this technique can be used:
The look relies on the fact that dragons on Flight Rising are most commonly displayed against white or light backgrounds, so extremely light areas of a skin/accent can seem semi-invisible. It's a bit of a balancing act, since according to site rules the shading and line art must still be
somewhat visible, but go as light as you can, and if Staff says the shading isn't visible enough, just make some alterations and try again.
You can try different hues of light colors, too! I recommend either a light version of some other color that's present in your design (for harmony's sake), a light blue/cyan (a naturally unobtrusive color), or else a light yellowish-brownish (similar to the colors of the website). Just play around and see what works best in your individual case!
"Breaking" the line art
(without breaking the rules)
The official Skin/Accent rules state
"Skins and Accents must preserve the original line art, do not make changes to the drawing of the dragon." This means no altering or covering the original line art and shading. But there are also plenty of user-made skins and accents that have the appearance of "apparel" or drapery or other things that seem to cover the line art. So how does that work?
Basically, you can draw clothing or objects "on top" of your dragon, as long as:
- Everything stays within the overall silhouette of the dragon, and
- The base shading and line art still shows on top of whatever you've drawn
For example, this is no good, because the base line art and shading have been turned off - you can't see the shape of the dragon's wing under the umbrella:
But with the line art and shading added back in,
this would likely be accepted as an accent:
It can sometimes be a bit of a balancing act, trying to make the line art and shading unobtrusive enough to look okay, but visible enough for Staff to accept it. If an accent gets rejected, don't worry too much - it happens to all of us. Just make some adjustments and try again :)
Some additional tips:
- Try to work with the natural shapes of the dragon, when possible. The less you have to fight the line art and shading, the better.
- Detail! Detail distracts the eye and makes you notice the line art less, because there's already so much going on.
- Remember that the shadows and line art will darken and muddy the colors underneath them somewhat, so draw your underlying image just a liiitle bit lighter, a liiiitle bit more vibrant, a liiitle bit higher-contrast than you think you need to. (There is such a thing as going too far with this, but a little bit helps ^_^)
