This might be the last JF for two weeks or so. I'm headed over to my parent's house in Spokane. I might do a JF on the Run, but who knows.
Greetings, yet another Making of Javantea's Fate. Since this is 301, I decided to give you a lesson. My decision is also due to the fine lesson that I learned today. I wasted most of the day playing video games. However, I got a little bit motivated after dinner to create something that might be of use to Hack Mars. I attempted to work on Hack Mars and actually got two or three models made in Milkshape 3d. But they sucked. So the inevitable happened: video games. Err, actually video games happened both before and after my lack of 3d modelling ability showed its ugly face, but whatever. After dinner, I opened up GIMP. I created the above picture in The GIMP after a bit of learning happened.
This is the 300th Making of JF that has made it to the web. That calls for a celebration, no? Well, the above image and the below lesson/rant is my celebration. I had fun making the above image. It taught me a bunch of things and satified my urge to create something beautiful. I made it using XFig and The GIMP, both in Linux exclusively. I did the vector graphics in XFig and exported it to PNG (scaled to 200% of the original size) which I edited in thoroughly in The GIMP to produce the above image. I used The GIMP's gaussian blur IIR filter to produce the gradient-like effect which is seen all around the body and clothing. How exactly did I do it? I darkened a 12-20 pixel selection around the border of the object using several layers and several images. Then a few blurs take care of the rest. I like the effect about 50%. Half of me says that it is a nice effect, easy to do, and surpasses the quality of the flat color. The other half of me says that it is far too cheap to appropriately estimate 3d shading. Direction is not shown, but could be in the future. The shading gives a person the idea of a smooth 3d object, but probably not a human. *shrug* it's better than nothing and it's better than spending more time on something less pretty. One idea would be to spend time with an airbrush making this look better. I have quite a few pics from the web that I really like that have been airbrushed to perfection and beyond. I myself don't want to do that. Why? Because I'm a 3d cel anime artist, not a 2d artist. All the 2d work I do is for skins. So making something look 3d would mostly be wasted. I also like doing flat color. Cel shading is quite a cool thing when used properly. So the easy way to do that is flat color. And if a person adds a bit of 3d gourand shading to that, they can make it look like a nice smooth anime. It's not cel shading, but it's good enough for me.
This is the last MoJF before I have completed a full 300 pages, that calls for a celebration! But not until Friday1. ^_^ So when artists get over 500,000 hits, they do a fan service pic or someone does a fan art pic for them.
