ShimmeryDaze

Okay, here's mine. To get the blue and purple flames, make a new layer with gray clouds (flames) with Difference as the layer opacity again. Great tut. Thanks so much.

I love Paint.NET! I forget how long I've had it, but I don't even miss Photoshop. Okay, maybe a little, but mostly because I haven't learned all of the dot net tricks yet. I tend to stick to the same techniques. But I've been branching out from pixel graphics and wanted to show the results. This was a pencil sketch that I scanned into my computer. I colored it using Paint.NET. I do it the lazy way. I separate the different color sections (hair, skin, clothes, flower parts) into their own layers, create a new layer, fill it with whatever color I want that part to be and then mess with the Blending Mode, hue/saturation, and brightness/contrast until I have what I like. Pencil sketches tend to be pretty light, so to get that inky look, I start out by duplicating the sketch, and using the Multiply blending mode on the top layer. It works a lot better than messing with brightness/contrast. To get her tattoos to have that rainbow effect, I made a layer and filled it with different colors. Then I magic wanded the body and deleted the rest. The blue/purple skin was on a different layer, so all I did was erase the parts where the tattoo was, and the rainbow peeked through where I erased. Similar technique for the wings. A nice, simple way to add texture to the color is to make a layer and use the cloud effect with two similar colors before messing with the blending mode. I did that for the flower petals and the pollen thingy. I really like Overlay, Additive, and Multiply for this technique, but it depends on what you're going for. The first time I used this technique, the results were a little crude, but with practice, I ended up with this. I really like it. I've seen people mentioning plug-ins, so I'll have to check those out. Take care!

I actually prefer the unblended version too. Fantastic work Sweedie. I love seeing all the fantastic stuff people make with this program. Tember, that's really cute. If you do a google search of "graphic tutorial beginner" you'd probably find some good ones. And here's a good one for isometric stuff: http://www.19.5degs.com/element/869.php

First you find a good tutorial: http://www.xandorra.co.uk/ http://ver.rubberhouse.net/ Both of those sites have good tutorials for beginners. Then you e-mail me if you have any questions. Heheh... crystal@shimmerydaze.com

Lol, sorry for the confusion, Dan. Actually, aatwo, I don't do sprite work really. Dollz are a little bit different, but if you check out Angy Chan, she does both and they're awesome. http://www.yumestudio.it/angychan/ She does details, props, backgrounds, animation, and it's all just amazing. Your sprites are very cute too. I dig your pickle guy, lol.

Yah, that thing is seriously cool. I can't stop staring at it. It struck me after I posted that--You made a GAME on your calculator? I remember someone shared like a tetris type thing where the 'U' catches 'O's but I could not figure out how they coded it. And I looked at the code and everything. Did NOT make me want to make games on it. *sigh* Back then (1995) that was the cool thing to do with those. I could barely use it to do my homework, lol. I tell you what, if you make another game, I'll take care of your sprites for you, okay? Lol. You should see my dragons, they kick butt.

Lol...I guess we all have our strengths. I LOVE your new av, btw. That is kick < no swearing > looking!

Thank you, Dan. I have no idea what you're talking about, lol. You start with a base on one layer, draw some hair on another, etc. I could lend you some palettes if you have trouble finding colors that go together...? Shading just takes practice. Each element (hair, pants, eyes) has about 2-5 shades each, the eye does the rest of the blending. You're welcome to zoom in on the image and see for yourself. I guess it also depends on interest. The reason I started making dollz is because I was interesting in fashion design. Basically, it's a drawing of a person who is wearing clothes...heh. Pretty simple. I get stuck on backgrounds and props. Plus people (even other dollers) talk about light source all the time, which totally loses me. You can probably tell--I usually just do basic back is dark, front is light shading...heheh...

Lol@Dan. That IS a good tutorial, I've followed it several times just for fun. Awesome!!!

That kicks < no swearing >! I never knew you could do that! Stupid doing it by hand bloody potato! Woohoo! Hey, I just tried doing the same thing with the paint bucket, and that works too! Hah! Oh, this is going to make changing skintones a LOT easier than using the color replace tool! Hee...

I use the pencil tool primarily because I do pixel work. I use the grid when I'm counting pixels.

Very cool backgrounds, guys. Here's what I make with Paint.NET... Base by Pixel Pandemonium

*jumps into love fest* I love that when you copy and paste something, it pastes into the same spot instead of the top-left of the image. This saves a lot of time with lining up stuff, especially if the image is really large to begin with.

Or possibly, the layer that your text is on is invisible and the jpeg won't show saved layers that aren't checked.

You can't recolor any color to transparent. Any color you try to turn transparent using the recolor tool will turn white instead. I've tried it too.