[thrmx]

Camel

Not much of a story behind this; I'm currently working on a game that takes place in Egypt, so I got inspired make this camel.

I'm not sure the fur texture is quite where I want it, but it's incredibly tedious to render so I feel like I need to stop before I go insane

Suggestions and comments welcome.

Max

[ December 01, 2001: Message edited by: thrmx ]

[HawkOne]

Hey there,

That is nice rendering you've got there, is that Painter ?

My crit would be that the ear(s) and the area around the ear, the top, and the back of the head looks a bit wrong.

Secondly the direction of the fur on the neck looks too uniform, camelhair of the type of camel you have drawn is curly, the camels with long straight hair have a different look due to living in a different climate. To simplify painting curly hair, you could without too much trouble make yourself a custom brush, saving you a lot of trouble. If you're using Painter, you could even use imagehose for the same purpose, with automatic varying of size, direction and colour-variations. I believe Corel PhotoPaint can do that too.

If you really want to get into drawing animals correctly, I reccomend the book "Anatomy of Animals" by Ernest E. Thomson, it features diagrams and descriptions of all sorts of creatures, including the camel.

I also dug up an image for your reference. ( hope it works)



Painting on a white surface might strain/confuse your eyes when you work. Maybe a tip would be to imagine the environment of your motive, and make that the background/surface you are drawing on.
Since camels are usually trotting around in deserts, a sandy beige colour might help you.

Hope that was helpful ...


[ December 01, 2001: Message edited by: HawkOne ]

[thrmx]

HawkOne,

Thanks for your comments. I made an updated version, trying to incorporate your suggestions.

http://www.geocities.com/blueaxionmax/index.html

The picture was done in Photoshop. I didn't have my Wacom with me today so I had a hard time trying to get the hair oriented the way I intended with the mouse. I'm glad that you pointed out that the hair should actually be more fuzzy since I found this to be easier to control (although there's still a little bit of splotchiness)

Max

[Robert Ashley]

Looks like a gay pride camal. Not because of the drawing...but because of the reign colors on his head.

Hey, I live in south Florida...I see those rainbow stickers all over peoples cars all the time.

If you are going for that...then stay with the colors. But keep in mind that is the gay pride flag.

I would also do something with that ear. It looks a little flat like its pasted to the head

[Solayna]

Awww... Isn't that just the cutest thing!

I didn't notice the gay pride thing at all until Robert pointed it out *heh*
I just thought it was one of those bright..er.. camel reign things (sorry, I really don't know what it's called *lol*) The colours look a bit too bright and disturbing, though. I would tone them down a bit...

[HawkOne]

Hi again,

I still think you could improve on your image. The comments I made last time is still in need of some attention I think.
The ear in your drawing is looking more like that of a German Shepherd dog since it's tall and pointy. Maybe you could try to make it shorter and rounder. The texture still has that uniform vertical stripy pattern.

I forgot to mention the neck last time, I think the neck on your drawing is a bit on the short and straight side.

Let me show you what I mean in a little "camel study" I did. I roughly followed the reference I have from the book I mentioned in a black outline, making sure it was "closed".

I used magic wand to select the background area and inverted the selection. I added a new layer to work in below the outline. I filled this area with a sandy colour, and proceeded to choose a "splotchy" brush to dab in darker and lighter tones of almost black brown all the way up to very light beige.

Using the same selection as earlier I used the sponge filter, and then noise/monochrome to make any pattern in the "fill" be less obvious. I then used the dodge/burn tool to create lighter/darker areas to suggest form.

Now this whole procedure is very quick (about 5-10 min), and it provides a good starting point for refining the textures and details. I'm afraid there is no way around spending a lot of time (hours) on drawing a convincing fur if you really want it to be as realistic as possible.

It really depends for what purpose you are going to use your image ...



[ December 03, 2001: Message edited by: HawkOne ]

[ December 10, 2001: Message edited by: HawkOne ]