Game fan art

[sunteam_paul]

I recently got a Wacom pen/pad thing and have been playing around. This is my first attempt at a proper painting in Photoshop. It doesn't hold up to close scrutiny but I'm happy with the general feel of it.

[SamIAm]

That looks great!

Space Harrier has always been a favorite of mine. When it comes to the character himself, I always thought there was something inspiring about the way he'd get hit, then just get right back up and say "get ready!".

[Ji-L87]

That looks pretty good. With the brush you used for the clouds, the smudge-tool can sometimes do wonders : )

Edit:
Hope you don't mind I made an edit to show what I mean:

[sunteam_paul]

Ooh, I'll have to try that, it looks great. What settings did you use for that?

[Ji-L87]

Ooh, I'll have to try that, it looks great. What settings did you use for that?

Smudge tool, with one of those diagonal texture brushes set at 80% strength and varying the brush size while working around. Trying to create strong contours that you can later fade/blur or mix a bit is the important but hard point. The light yellow highlight on the clouds might get a bit too softened and smudged around when doing this so a good idea can be to re-apply a bit of that as you work.

Sadly, this doesn't work that well on people and objects, as it does for things like clouds & mist.

[sunteam_paul]

Thanks, I'll have a bit of a play with that.

[Digi.k]

colours are really great

Sadly I really dislike what they have done with photoshop CS5 and onwards...

[Ji-L87]

Sadly I really dislike what they have done with photoshop CS5 and onwards...

What have they done in CS5? Integrated even more unnecessary things like 3D rendering or something? :p
CS3's the newest one I've used so... (though, I sort of miss 7.0 - only bad thing about that one was that you can't move multiple layers at the same time).

[roflmao]

I use CS5 and love it. :p  

There have been some additions to the 3D side of things, but I hear CS6 goes even further (and I don't see how that's not a good thing).  

I'm interesting in hearing what you don't like about CS5 that you *do* like about CS4.  

I don't plan on upgrading anytime soon because they expect me to pay to upgrade to 5.5, let alone 6 only about a year later.  And they have been aware of major security flaws in CS5 and earlier versions that the only resolution, in their mind, is to pay to upgrade to CS6.  So they have made it onto my shit-list.    But that being said, I don't plan on upgrading anytime soon because CS5 rocks, imo.

[Ji-L87]

I don't know, I'm actually thinking of maybe getting Paint Tool SAI or something. It seems pretty popular nowadays and the trial left a good impression (though I only used it like, one time).

Photoshop is a bit too focused on doing everything - and while that may be a good thing sometimes, I rarely need to use the more advanced features. Give me an easy to use layer-funtion, good way of choosing colors and a good setup of brushes/pens that are actually useable for lineart. Even photoshop's hardest standard brushes looks soft and unsharp when using any other size than 1 pixel.