HeroMachine Character Portrait Creator

that is just awesome

WOW!  Very cool!

Your posing is perfect and love the colors.  The secondary patterns on your highlights are crazy good.  I can only imagine how bogged down your computer was after applying those :).  Are you in the field of art or is this just a hobby?

The only thing I would ask you to revisit are the highlights on the hands.  When using small gradient shapes tends to make them brighter and more solid.  I would go to a number 2 size scale width on the fingers and tone down the color to see if they would blend more.

Thanks for posting this.  Very inspiring to try something out of the box with the program.

Cheers!

Y’know, you’re pretty good at this. (Strokes chin appreciatively)

Now that I’ve learned the value of reference pics, I wanted to try a more complicated pose. I also wanted to do a piece using the coloring/shading style I used in “Penance Labor”, but more so.

Calling it “Primaries” because of the color scheme.

[img]https://s11.postimg.org/ykbu6zpib/Screenshot_2017_03_11_at_1_47_44_AM.png[/img]
[i]Reference Photo:[/i] https://s1.postimg.org/rnh9h51vz/ab9e965c.jpg
[i]Show Your Work:[/i] https://www.heromachine.com/forums/topic/show-your-work-progress-of-a-design/#post-143318

“Primaries”

The very first thing I did was find a good reference photo for the kind of pose I wanted to do: https://s1.postimg.org/rnh9h51vz/ab9e965c.jpg

TO start off, I got all of the elements positioned in the right location and on the right layer (for the most part).
[img]https://s11.postimg.org/fdyn3t90j/Screenshot_2017_03_11_at_1_31_05_AM.png[/img]

Then I cleaned up the pose by masking onto insignia shapes.
[img]https://s14.postimg.org/scm5uq6ht/Screenshot_2017_03_11_at_1_32_09_AM.png[/img]

For a more 3D coloring effect, a positioned gradient backgrounds over their costumes, using the line details of the body items to help figure out placement.
[img]https://s22.postimg.org/krgr5om1d/Screenshot_2017_03_11_at_1_44_21_AM.png[/img]

Then I colored in the pose pieces with the darkest color of the gradient circles they were behind (all one color; primary, secondary, and line color) and made some of the colors for some of the gradients transparent, so they’d blend together better.
[img]https://s8.postimg.org/gswwq50bp/Screenshot_2017_03_11_at_1_44_58_AM.png[/img]

Repeated the previous two steps for the rest of the coloring, except I actually masked the gradients on here to keep the shape of the heads as well as show hair details. Didn’t like the way the hair was looking on the man (tried several colors/transparencies) so I just made it entirely invisible and added a pattern to act as his hair.
[img]https://s21.postimg.org/e24u1c2pz/Screenshot_2017_03_11_at_1_46_11_AM.png[/img]

To finish the piece, I added some highlighting and shading to their faces as well as patterns on their costumes and the woman’s hair. Then I hid the masking shapes, added a background, and called it good to go! For now least, might tinker with it more later.
[img]https://s11.postimg.org/ykbu6zpib/Screenshot_2017_03_11_at_1_47_44_AM.png[/img]

Still working up the courage to try n start the next issue over from scratch.

In the meantime, here are some simple mock-ups of the characters I’ll be introducing in the coming issues:

[img]https://s16.postimg.org/ejlh1uqph/Screenshot_2017_03_07_at_12_22_04_PM.png[/img]

[img]https://s4.postimg.org/vn9rr8ijx/Screenshot_2017_03_07_at_12_22_55_PM.png[/img]

[img]https://s9.postimg.org/9o3j26vrj/Screenshot_2017_03_07_at_12_23_46_PM.png[/img]

[img]https://s27.postimg.org/spzub6zrn/Screenshot_2017_03_07_at_12_25_08_PM.png[/img]