Zab's Gallery

[Zabobula]

From now on instead of makin' a new thread every so often, this is just gonna be my thread where I post my creations and wot nots.

Here are two relatively new photoshop pics I made in my limited spare time. Both took around 30 mins. That doesn't mean they're finished.

The Storm - I've been trying to do an epic landscape scene of mountains, a lake, and a space background for some time now. This was my first try.


Dark Serenity:
And this is my second try...after some pep talk from BP. (Wasn't really much of a talk :P)

[Elias]

The land scape looks fake but I like it.
Thumbs up.

[Reaper]

Now, THIS is awesome.
I am not sure... Is it realistic that there is this blue line in the middle of the first picture? But it looks good anyway. Did you make the storm by yourself or is it from a picture?
second picture: I can't imagine how to do something like that( but I didn't try either). Awesome. Just two things I don't really like:
1. The black kinda "outlines" of the mountain. You should maybe have delted them before putting the pictures together and then smoothened the border between sky/mountain a bit.
2. I guess on the bottom is also some kind of lake reflection, but its blured too much. You should be able to notice that it once was a sky with a planet.
But these are the only bad things I can find. Other than that its very good.

[Zabobula]

1. The black kinda "outlines" of the mountain. You should maybe have delted them before putting the pictures together and then smoothened the border between sky/mountain a bit.
2. I guess on the bottom is also some kind of lake reflection, but its blured too much. You should be able to notice that it once was a sky with a planet.
But these are the only bad things I can find. Other than that its very good.

I had to get re-learned on the whole "how to make a planet". But after I read the tutorial I just went from there. Lol, my photoshop class didn't teach me none of that. O_o. Take that Rolf (teacher)

1. Yeah I think I had anti-alias on. That's probly why it looks like that.

2. Lol yeah I overdid it a bit.

[Azriel]

1st pic:
after clouds > diff clouds + levels, u should "delete" some of the "top" lightning that doesn't end, plus perhaps do a proper "reflection" (flip vert + random skews/blurs) rather than using the same "lightning" layer (though it doesn't look too bad here).

both pics:
should have a slight blur between the landscape and the sky (+ those mentioned earlier about the reflections and stuff).



Azriel~

[Alectric]

adding to what Azriel said^
1st pic:
there are some parts on the black tree bits where they are smooth, and bits where there are roughness, and the lightning should have just a little less cloudiness IMO. maybe you should add some ripples to the reflection?
2nd Pic:
the picture looks very flat. did you use a spherize filter on the planet? nice work on the colours though, nicely fitted

[Zabobula]

the picture looks very flat. did you use a spherize filter on the planet?

Yeah? Is that a bad thing? Or were you going to suggest a better way?

[Silverthorn]

the picture looks very flat. did you use a spherize filter on the planet?

Yeah? Is that a bad thing? Or were you going to suggest a better way?

You know, you can see when you use the spherize-filter; the inner parts of the sphere are much more blurred than the outmost parts (which then look as sharp as they should). Using that filter is definitely not the worst thing to do....

If you're trying to be a pro-artist, you ought to paint that stuff freely, not using any filters at all. I know, this is ranging into the impossible-part, so let's just say it this way: the more you are able to draw on your own (for example volumetric objects such as spheres etc), the better you are. Try drawing and shading simple shapes such as cubes, cylinders, cones, pyramids, squeres, and the like. Do not texture them. This would be a new step. Just when you're satisfied with what you produced you can advance onto texturing your objects.
A probably much faster alternative is resizing. Therefore, you'll need to work at like 200-400% of the size you're aiming for. For example, if you're planning to make an 800x600-image, create it @ 3200x2400. When you later resize it, nobody will notice how blurry the center of the sphere once was

[ZOL]

When it comes to photoshop, I don't know anything. You see, I'm a pen and paper kind of guy.

"The Storm" looks good and could actually be used as a bg in LF2. I like the outer space-looking gas clouds in "Dark Serenity", though the celestial bodies look nice too.

[Alectric]

im sorry if i offended you Zab, that wasnt my intention.
and i was suggesting a spherize filter. or at least blur it a little bit.