"Ask an Artist" Thread

[Veritas]

Welcome to the "Ask an Artist" Thread! Here you can leave a question asking various things about graphics or just art in general and have one of the section's artists answer your questions. There's also a directory of artists, so, if you don't feel comfortable posting here or need some continuous help, you can simply IM one of the artists who leave their contact information.

Guidelines for Questioners:
- Simply post your question and wait for someone to reply. You can leave contact information if you'd like, but it's not required.
- Before posting a question, please, take the time to skim through the pages to make sure your question hasn't already been answered. There's a search function at the top of the thread.
- Be specific. Try to avoid questions like, "How do you make a tag?"
- The standard forum rules apply.
- There's no such thing as a stupid question.
- No asking for specific stocks, resources, etc. There's a thread for those in Resources. It's acceptable though to ask where to find archives of those things.
- Use common sense. If you think it's not right to ask here, you're probably right, so don't ask it.

Guidelines for Answerers:
- Be specific.
- Be polite.
- Answer completely and concisely.
- If they break one of the above rules, don't reply.
- Forum rules apply.
- Use common sense. If you think it's not the right way to answer, you're probably right, so don't even bother posting it.
- If you'd like to add your information to the list below, contact me or another mod of this section, and we'll edit it in.

Artist Directory:
Veritas
MSN - duzyourfacehurt@hotmail.com
AIM - duzyourfacehurt7

[gramp anime scholar]

Ok, so I'll ask some questions that could possibly appear up frequently.

1) What's the difference between the word "tag" and the word "sig"?
2) What's the difference between a "render" and a "stock"?
3) What's a "C4D"?
4) How do I cut stocks?
5) How do I use renders?
7) Can I ever be as good as the older members (See: Dan, Ray, Prod, Veritas, etc)?

[Massive Attack]

Do any of you have any influences besides your peers and tutorials?

[Hellpark]

Originally Posted by Proline

Ok, so I'll ask some questions that could possibly appear up frequently.

1) What's the difference between the word "tag" and the word "sig"?
2) What's the difference between a "render" and a "stock"?
3) What's a "C4D"?
4) How do I cut stocks?
5) How do I use renders?
7) Can I ever be as good as the older members (See: Dan, Ray, Prod, Veritas, etc)?

7. Most likely not.

[gramp anime scholar]

Ahaha, saw that one coming Ro.

[Hellpark]

Fuck I am bored and half ass these answers.

Originally Posted by Proline

Ok, so I'll ask some questions that could possibly appear up frequently.

1) What's the difference between the word "tag" and the word "sig"?
2) What's the difference between a "render" and a "stock"?
3) What's a "C4D"?
4) How do I cut stocks?
5) How do I use renders?
7) Can I ever be as good as the older members (See: Dan, Ray, Prod, Veritas, etc)?

1. Nothing you fuck.
2. Render is a 3D creation, stock is a picture.
3. A program.
4. Use scissors.
5. However you feel like.
6. the fuck?
7. NOOO

[gramp anime scholar]

D: Wow, I forgot 6. Thanks buddy, now I feel stupid ):

--------------------------

Do any of you have any influences besides your peers and tutorials?

This is a question that would get multiple results, since it's pretty member specific. Most people won't be influenced for sigs other than their peers and tutorials. It's not really something you can call art, unless you expand on it and start doing large pieces, such as scarecrow, envyme2x, etc, or create backgrounds that are exceptionally original and/or creative. Most people just spew sigs out of their asses to get popular, and most of the time, they've just learned how to do a specific effect via tutorials, or they saw someone really good make a nice looking tag and they feel the need to imitate.

[Veritas]

Originally Posted by Proline

Ok, so I'll ask some questions that could possibly appear up frequently.

1) What's the difference between the word "tag" and the word "sig"?
2) What's the difference between a "render" and a "stock"?
3) What's a "C4D"?
4) How do I cut stocks?
5) How do I use renders?
7) Can I ever be as good as the older members (See: Dan, Ray, Prod, Veritas, etc)?

1) There's really not much of a difference. Tag is a small graphic. They're usually placed in someone's signature on a forum which is where they get their label as "signatures" or "sigs" from.
2) Render is a 3D object of some sort. They go through a rendering process to be made. Stocks are images of people, landscapes, objects, etc. used to make any sort of graphic.
3) C4D is a shortened term for renders made in the program Cinema 4D. It's also the abbreviation for the program itself.
4) Outline it with the pen tool to cut out most things. Use the extract filter for hair.
5) However you want. Most people set them to things like lighten and color dodge. Others use them as solid effects in the background or foreground.
6) Good job, Ken.
7) Artistic skill is subjective. Work until you feel that you are as good as the older members. You may get there someday. You may not. Everyone has differing artistic abilities and styles. Just have fun making art, and I'm sure you'll do fine.

Originally Posted by Massive Attack

Do any of you have any influences besides your peers and tutorials?

I get influenced by pretty much anything. It's random for me. I most often get influenced by current events, music, and books. I usually only look to be inspired by my peers and tutorials when I'm in a slump. I try to experiment more than I look at tutorials and imitate others now that I'm familiar with how to use Photoshop and Illustrator.

[Tenacious GFX]

ok i'm reviving this thread....

How do you vector something?

[gramp anime scholar]

Use the pen tool in either Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator. There are other vectoring programs, but those two come to mind quickly. If you want to be serious about vectoring, go with Illustrator.

[~Gunther~]

How can you tell if a sig has good flow or not?

[Charlie]

^If your eyes end up looking at a sig, and see that the effects are flowing in one direction, rather than darting to each part of the sig, trying to connect the effects together.

Flow ; Has direction
No Flow ; Scattered Effects

That's my interpretation, at least.

[Tenacious GFX]

Originally Posted by ~Gunther~

How can you tell if a sig has good flow or not?

well there are different ways to have flow. You can have the effects diagonaly or you can have them make a "v". Those are just some ways.

[iProd]

Two questions likely to be asked down the road.

How would you go about creating depth?
What is a light source?

[.:[Kazuma]:.]

Depth is like a perception of how deep or far away something is from another object, person etc. For depth use nice light source and the dodge,burn,blur,and sharpen tools.

light source the source of light in a piece.

OZMG were is the extract filter Veritas mentioned never head or seen it?