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Thread: Principles of GFX - A Weird Outline of Making Graphics

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    Principles of GFX - A Weird Outline of Making Graphics

    So you might have noticed this section is dead. Also there haven't been many dedicated GFX artists around besides me. And I've been interested in making a somewhat comprehensive guide to GFX, kinda similar to the one that used to be on PokeCommunity. So here I am typing this up. I don't know how frequently I'll update this, but I'll try to update this as best I can without sounding like a textbook. Feel free to ask questions about graphics in this thread as well.

    Disclaimer: I am in no way trying to force my beliefs of making graphics onto others. The purpose of this guide is to help out people that are interested in making graphics. This is also not an end-all, be-all guide to graphics and it is highly recommended to seek out more info on making GFX if you are interested.



    TABLE OF CONTENTS

    Last edited by Shaymin; 11-06-2016 at 02:44 AM.


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    -------------------------- THE BASICS -----------


    Right, so I seem to be using the term "graphics" and "GFX" interchangebly, but they mean basicallly the same thing (though if you ask me, I label color modified gifs and avatars as graphics, but never GFX). There are a couple terms that are thrown out very often that one might scratch their head for.

    Render
    An image cut out. During my time on tumblr, people that typically make graphics will use "png" instead of "render", but they're the same thing. Do note that all renders end in .png. They have checkerboard backgrounds if you open them up in an image editing program like Photohop and their backgrounds retain the blue color you get if you hover over a thumbnail in your files. They look something like this:

    Spoiler!


    Stock
    I'll be frank, this word seems to have two meanings. In some situations, a stock is an image that hasn't had it's background thrown out like this. In other situations, it refers to a background that hasn't had additional resources stacked out top of it like this.

    Focal
    This would be the first thing you see on a tag. The main goal of a tag is to build something creative around a focal. If a tag hasn't successfully done so, the result is a messy tag. Usually.

    When you boil down to it, a signature/tag isn't that much different from--say--an illustration. Of course, that isn't to say it's incredibly similar to an illustration, tags do have their own principles; ones that certainly help a lot when some of them are in use, but all of them usually don't have to be used at the same time. These principles seem to differ slightly depending on the GFX Artist you talk to, but these are mine:

    • Lighting - The way light interacts with anything in the tag, most notably the render/focal.
    • Flow - General movement of a tag. A good tag knows how to use the movement of the eye to its fullest.
    • Depth - The "3D-ness" of a tag. Often used to draw attention to the focal. One of my personal favorites.
    • Typography - Text in a tag. Often considered one of the hardest aspects of tagmaking.
    • Color - There's no true way I can define it without using the word "color", but it's the way a tag achieves unity through use of specific colors.
    • Style - A sort of ambiguous term, but it's a way of making a tag using specific resources (or tools in some cases). Think of it like EDM genres.


    With the exception of fonts (probably), most to all of the things listed here have resources and tutorials on deviantART. As for fonts, I typically use dafont. Lemme know if any of you want links for resources and tutorials that I'd recommend.
    Last edited by Shaymin; 05-28-2016 at 04:00 PM.


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    -------------------------- PLACEMENT-----------


    So this is something that I didn't discuss in the first lesson post, but I feel it's one of the more crucial aspects of tagmaking. I don't expect you to pay attention to this one a whole lot, but do remember this is here once the stuff in The Basics is covered. I'm going over this now instead of later because it seems to be something a lot of GFX Artists don't seem to explain quite as in depth as say, color or lighting, and I can see why since placement is more of a "feel it out" concept. So take this post with a grain of salt, whenever you may be reading this.

    So the first thing a general GFX tutorial will start out with is a brief intro to the rule of thirds. I don't think reading a wikipedia article about it'll help a whole lot with your understanding of the rule of thirds (heck, I didn't really get it the first couple times), so I'll show a png of a study PSD I was experimenting with.


    As you can see, the lines divide the image into nine equal sections. The places where the horizontal and vertical lines intersect are what I call "points of interest". The irregularity of the positioning is what makes a signature interesting. That's not to say that all signatures have to strictly follow the rule of thirds, but it's a useful starting point. In this same example, my focal isn't exactly on the upper left point and it never had to be.


    This signature might look familiar. I've modified the text a little because well... I wasn't really a fan of the original text options. Here, I don't use the rule of thirds at all because of the symmetry of the render. Had I moved the render to the left or right, the signature wouldn't have been very interesting. For whatever reason, some people don't like it when the render is put in the middle, but it really just depends on the render and most of the time, you're gonna find renders that fit the rule of thirds.

    Now let's go back to the study tag.


    Now why might I want the focal to be near the upper left point instead of the upper right one? The answer lies in the fact that the render where it is in the example has better flow and usage of space. Let's nudge the focal to the left and right for a second.




    In the first example, I sacrifice a flow for a more interesting focal position. Not only that, but there's this awkward amount of space that I now have and while I can make up for my lost flow with this space, it draws away the attention from my focal—which is what I don't want because the focal is supposed to get attention. On the other hand, if I move the focal to the left, I don't sacrifice as much flow, however I have as much awkward space as the first example, if not more. There are also more problems with the second example I could pick out, however I think I'll reserve that for another time when I have more of these posts typed up.


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    -------------------------- LIGHTING-----------


    Oh jeez I forgot this was here. Ummm... yeah I'll just keep this here. I'll need this for guides on other forums anyway and this is a good place to keep track of my stuff. To be honest I don't have any recent examples in particular that I could use, but I'll try my best to make use of what I can.

    Lighting is one of the more straightforward aspects of GFX and the concept overlaps with the traditional art understanding of it. However it's kind of tricky to find a good balance for lighting, since it's easy to get carried away with it. Let's start with the basics. Before we go to signature use, I'll be using proper art for this so that it translates a bit better to the GFX.

    Shading in art is a little downplayed in GFX, but it's still pretty important. This picture of Jeanne Alter, for example, has some blue over her head, but notice how she's shaded. The sword casts a shadow over her body, her hair has a light to dark gradient from top to bottom, and the shadows casted by her armor are on the ground. The way she's shaded correctly shows that the light is above Jeanne's head.

    Now let's take something that has a light source from something else, like this art of Saber. Saber's sword is glowing, so this makes the sword a light source, right? Right. This is backed up by the fact that her gauntlet in her sword hand has the brightest highlights and the right side of her armor is lit up by her sword, followed by the lighting on her face and hair.

    Really, I could go on, if you're planning on doing traditional or digital art, this is a way of studying shading, but with real life photos.

    So how is this stuff related to GFX lighting? Well now we're translating the observations we did in studying the art, and doing it backwards. In other words, the objective of putting lighting in GFX is establishing the light source instead of establishing the light and shadows of the focal. Well technically you could do both, but let's not get too in depth right now.


    So I'm not the most consistent when it comes to lighting, but this is one of my more recent tags that has a proper light source (if you could call it one). The original light source is coming from the right side, which is where I placed a light source in the form of a ball. It fits very well thanks to the color scheme.

    So how is it easy to get caried away with lighting?

    Well there are these things called fractals. They're pretty popular, and for a good reason. They go with basically everything (no I'm serious, they do) and one of the first things that you'll learn is blend modes (that drop down table somewhere near your layers that says Normal, Dissolve, Overlay, Soft Light, Hard Light, etc.), which helps to get rid of all of the black stuff around the fractal while making the tag look bright and pretty. They give the tag a finished look and I'd be lying if I said I didn't abuse fractals at some point in my GFX.


    I did this one around the time that X and Y launched. Big difference in skill, right? This one has too much lighting. I had a light source over Zangoose's head, but I also had fractals around the darker C4Ds that I had, but there were shadows on top of the fractals. I also had some bokehs, apparently. What? Doesn't really make sense, right? The reason this is so bad is because too many light sources makes the signature look very messy despite the dressed up look the fractals give it.

    So I think that's it for lighting. There was also that one thing earlier about setting the predetermined lighting on fire, but I couldn't tell you how to do that even if I tried.


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