kant:

teamLab - Crystal Universe

this is what I imagine when I try to externalize interior spaces

cthughalife:

How to: Character portraits from Hero Forge designs

Here’s a quick look at how to make an avatar or color character sheet portrait from a Hero Forge design. You could also use this process to

• design enemies
• generate NPC portraits
• come up with general character illustrations

If you don’t want to use Hero Forge, any grayscale 3D rendering will work. I may do a more in-depth pictorial guide later.

Steps

1. Get the source image - Use Hero Forge’s built-in screenshot tool to get a grayscale image with no background. If the lighting is wrong, try flipping it horizontally in the “pose” menu; you can flip it back in photoshop. Just be careful not to save it flipped.
2. Set up the outline - Open it in photoshop. Create a duplicate layer with 4px stroke and 0% fill to outline the image. This will always be frontmost.
3. Prepare for flatting - Do 4px linework to separate the regions of color. Shadows and highlights don’t need to be isolated because they’ll come back in from the mode overlay in a later step. I use two copies of this; one will be final linework, and one will be the basis for flat color layers.
4. Do flat colors - Fill the outlined areas with flat color. Be sure to extend your selection by 2px, so that final linework will overlay it completely. Depending on the lighting of the mini, you may need to use different levels of saturation for the colors. This may take a while, as you work through colorways for your character.
5. Reintroduce 3D - Set up the original grayscale screenshot as an overlay of the color layer.
6. Add texture - Add masked texture overlay layers to areas that would be textural IRL, or those which seem flat. In this example, I used images of brass to overlay parts of the armor.
7. Add detail - Add any illustrative details, like eyes, hair coloration, freckles, and fur texture.
8. Add shadows - Set up a threshold of the screenshot for deep blacks, and color it sun-shadow blue. Play with the blending until it feels right.
9. Add highlights - In particular, specular highlights and subsurface reflections will need attention. Most simple shadows will be handled by #4. I approach this as if I were working with an eraser, or a white conte crayon/colored pencil.
10. Clean up colors - The overlays slightly distort them, and while they may or may not be accurate, they may not communicate well. Her face is still a little too red and doesn’t read as brown as I’d like. (Ruth Negga was the skin color reference model)
11. Clean up lines - Remove unnecessary lines from the flat and linework layers. Clean up lines that are too uniform or jagged. I don’t have a drawing tablet anymore, so I was pretty lazy about this.

I made this character for a new fourth edition (4e) Zeitgeist campaign. I really liked the mini design. I won’t receive it in the mail for a few weeks, but I wanted to use a similar image for my character sheet.

I don’t work for Hero Forge and they have not endorsed this post. Still, they offer great tools for free, so do them a solid and buy a mini or two.

karl-shakur:

Check out my Instagram @Karl_Shakur

I’ve been working on curating my instagram feed to be more aesthetically pleasing. Come check it out and Tell me what you think

Feel free to follow me while you’re at it. @Karl_Shakur

Have a Wonderful Day

yep, a book and a mug will fit in there

1cyberimplant1:

Arthur Sozydai

tfw breathing