03 - Atlas Ward [Mouse]

[Tonnichiwa]

That's probably why my own art suffers. I don't really look at much imagery. I think it is because what is out there does not match what is in my head anyway so why bother looking...lol..but I really should get in the habit of doing that.

So I still think you are doing a fantastic job with this Mouse, even if you don't think it is up to par.

[J.Edward]

Mouse - do what you need to do with your cliffs, don't wait.
Others will join or start when they start, and then they will just have to fall in line with the cliffs you've done.
Don't let it stop you or slow you in any way.

[Mouse]

Well then, you definitely know more about them than me; I've never done much with symbol sets in my own work. I have drawn some, not quite the same as what I think you are talking about , but they're never quite the right thing for the map I am currently making, so they just sit in dusty corners of my studio and hard drive.

Haha! I know what you mean. I am very much the 'it just happens' sort. I just kind of... scribble... until it looks halfway right. Also, I look at a ton of reference imagery so I know where halfway to right is.

I don't think I enjoy making symbol sets any more and I would scribble, only its a bit difficult to scribble in CC3

That's probably why my own art suffers. I don't really look at much imagery. I think it is because what is out there does not match what is in my head anyway so why bother looking...lol..but I really should get in the habit of doing that.

So I still think you are doing a fantastic job with this Mouse, even if you don't think it is up to par.

The break in the chain for me is more about not being skilled enough to transfer what I've seen and fully remember on to paper (or in this case to the screen)

When I get stuck like I am right now, I usually walk away for a couple of hours and go do something a bit different, or I fiddle with something inconsequential - like the background and the layout. In this version I've finally got around to thinking about what the map will look like as an entity in its own right. Its also helped me to see that the colour of my water is really psychedelic! LOL!

### Latest WIP ###

[Mouse]

Mouse - do what you need to do with your cliffs, don't wait.
Others will join or start when they start, and then they will just have to fall in line with the cliffs you've done.
Don't let it stop you or slow you in any way.

LOL! How do you do that? Its nearly 4 am in the UK, the forum is really quiet, and you STILL manage to ninja me! LOL!

Thanks for the shove in the right direction I'm going to tackle the fluorescent lake and the cliff next

[Chashio]

... and I would scribble, only its a bit difficult to scribble in CC3

What about a different drawing program? ... I know you mentioned GIMP, and maybe it is good to stick with something you already know a little bit and learn more, but I also highly recommend ArtRage. It is great for drawing and painting digitally and is designed to be very intuitive for more artistic-brained people, like us - and it is not very expensive [it is even on sale at the moment].
If you just want to scribble and experiment some, you could download the demo and play with it. And if you have any questions on how to do stuff, I'd be happy to help.

[Tonnichiwa]

I agree with Chashio about Artrage being a great scribbling program. It is what I use when I don't feel like dealing with CC3. I just practice drawing in it every day with my tablet and scribble a lot. Then I practice drawing squares, circles, triangles, upside down triangles, rectangles and any other shape I can think of. I've gotten pretty good at drawing circles. I just make sure I do it every single day. Great program. Mine came free when my ex wife bought me a Wacom tablet for Christmas.

[kacey]

Thanks for the full resolution close up of the compass design, I don’t know how I missed that before, but it’s even more stunning this way.

You can definitely scribble in Gimp, just grab a small brush, and go nut’s...Just like drawing on paper, and Chashio is right Art Rage is a really cool programme, it’s fun to play around with. I have an older version for my desk top, but I picked up the touch version on the windows store for like 15 bucks or something.

The natural media brushes in art rage are really good, but Corel Painter tops the cake if you’re trying to simulate water colour in my opinion, and there pencil brushes really look like pencils. I would use Corel Painter more if it worked better on my Surface, it’s really an amazing programme, but it also comes with a steep price tag.

But even tho those programmes are really neat, you can simulate a pencil in Gimp, and Photoshop just fine, and if you check out Deviant art for custom brushes you’ll see that there are thousands that you can download for free....Or you can make you’re own it’s really not difficult...

And on a side note, while I’m on about Gimp, you can make coloured brushes in Gimp, you can’t do that in photoshop. You can make mountains or trees, or houses, or whatever in full colour, and just stamp them in like in CC3. You can even make animated brushes in Gimp, so you could have like ten different mountains, or trees in one animated brush, and it will cycle through to give you more variation, sort of how every time you stamp down a mountain in CC3 it changes to get a more varied mountain range, or forest...Anyway, I’m rambling on now so I’ll stop, I may be procrastinating on getting any work done on my city map, I can’t seem to make myself work on that today for some reason.

[Mouse]

What about a different drawing program? ... I know you mentioned GIMP, and maybe it is good to stick with something you already know a little bit and learn more, but I also highly recommend ArtRage. It is great for drawing and painting digitally and is designed to be very intuitive for more artistic-brained people, like us - and it is not very expensive [it is even on sale at the moment].
If you just want to scribble and experiment some, you could download the demo and play with it. And if you have any questions on how to do stuff, I'd be happy to help.

Thanks for the offer Chashio. I'll probably be asking you a few things when I touch up the final CC3 render though having got this far with it I think I will do what I can in CC3 first. As for Artrage... hmmmn. I'm one of those people who gets two pieces of software muddled up in my mind if I try learning two things at once, so I might have a look at it after I've learned how to use GIMP with reasonable proficiency first

I agree with Chashio about Artrage being a great scribbling program. It is what I use when I don't feel like dealing with CC3. I just practice drawing in it every day with my tablet and scribble a lot. Then I practice drawing squares, circles, triangles, upside down triangles, rectangles and any other shape I can think of. I've gotten pretty good at drawing circles. I just make sure I do it every single day. Great program. Mine came free when my ex wife bought me a Wacom tablet for Christmas.

LOL! Thanks Tonnichiwa You need to be careful about drawing too many circles, you know. The superstitious would say that being able to draw a perfect one is a sign of madness... or is that just envy speaking?

Thanks for the full resolution close up of the compass design, I don’t know how I missed that before, but it’s even more stunning this way.

You can definitely scribble in Gimp, just grab a small brush, and go nut’s...Just like drawing on paper, and Chashio is right Art Rage is a really cool programme, it’s fun to play around with. I have an older version for my desk top, but I picked up the touch version on the windows store for like 15 bucks or something.

The natural media brushes in art rage are really good, but Corel Painter tops the cake if you’re trying to simulate water colour in my opinion, and there pencil brushes really look like pencils. I would use Corel Painter more if it worked better on my Surface, it’s really an amazing programme, but it also comes with a steep price tag.

But even tho those programmes are really neat, you can simulate a pencil in Gimp, and Photoshop just fine, and if you check out Deviant art for custom brushes you’ll see that there are thousands that you can download for free....Or you can make you’re own it’s really not difficult...

And on a side note, while I’m on about Gimp, you can make coloured brushes in Gimp, you can’t do that in photoshop. You can make mountains or trees, or houses, or whatever in full colour, and just stamp them in like in CC3. You can even make animated brushes in Gimp, so you could have like ten different mountains, or trees in one animated brush, and it will cycle through to give you more variation, sort of how every time you stamp down a mountain in CC3 it changes to get a more varied mountain range, or forest...Anyway, I’m rambling on now so I’ll stop, I may be procrastinating on getting any work done on my city map, I can’t seem to make myself work on that today for some reason.

The shape was formed by drawing three regular 16 sided polygons on top of one another - large, medium and small, and drawing the folded polygon like a Spirograph drawing from point to point across the circle to the not quite opposite point of the largest polygon each time till it met with its beginning again. I then moved the secondary points in towards the centre one at a time with my move node tool to the two inner 16 sided polygons according to rank of importance till I ended up with the final design. I hope that makes sense! LOL!

[Mouse sucks air and gives teeth wind erosion] 15 bucks is kind of like 4 days food for me (I'm unemployed right now), but maybe it will be the next thing I save up for to reward myself for staying within budget I think I will probably do any additional 'post processing' of the final CC3 render in GIMP, since although I have the entire Corel suite its only version 11 from about 20 years ago, and its doesn't play nice with Windows 10. Drawing the building parts to make the new symbol set was a nightmare because CorelDraw kept crashing every time I did anything too fast for it. Win 10 doesn't like it when a program decides to make use of certain memory allocations, it seems (even though those allocations were fine in Win 8.1)

I think I still have an awful lot to learn in Gimp

...

Thanks all

[J.Edward]

LOL! How do you do that? Its nearly 4 am in the UK, the forum is really quiet, and you STILL manage to ninja me! LOL!

Thanks for the shove in the right direction I'm going to tackle the fluorescent lake and the cliff next

Hehe, if one is going to be a ninja.... one must be able to be ninja at all hours....

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[Mouse]

Hehehe! John 'Cato Fong' Edward! LOL!