Silverbrook Recounts A Tale of Humility
Feb 9th, 2008 by Carde
I am trying to use the uploading capabilities of the NextGen Gallery plugin for Wordpress, so this picture and subsequent ones may be shown only as thumbnails. No biggie. Just give them a click to see the full sized picture. The NextGen plugin has proven to be fairly easy to use. The only problem I had was in assigning the memory needed to run the php script. I know so very little about php scripts so lucky for me that Powweb, my host, makes this easy to do, if not terribly easy to find, on their website. 
Anyway. The picture you see above is the lineart used for the next installment of the Women of Roleplay Calendar. Yes, that’s right. It’s the February calendar, which makes it awfully late. I have my fair share of excuses, but goodness, to those who visit here, aren’t you tired of hearing about them? I have immense respect for Scott Kurtz, creator of PVP, a great webcomic — no, comic — because one day he just decided he was just going to do it. No ifs, ands or buts. He decided that he was going to give it his all to try and do what he loved for a living. And he continues to do so, making headway into comic books, podcasting, animation and even co-authoring a book. If he can do all that, I think the least I can muster is the ability to stick to a simple plan of bringing out pictures on time.
So, look for the completed calendar on the Women of Roleplay site and the original colored picture in the Ultima Online gallery in the next day or two.
In other news, I am just terrible at using color. I met Jane Metz the other day, and some simple advice she gave to me was to look at the paintings of those whom you admire and see how they use color and try to imitate them. By doing so you will gain a better understanding of how color is used properly, and then you can begin to experiment more on your own. Good advice, and her words are those I have heard before. Studying the great Masters of the last 1000 years is not a bad place to start. They are called “Master” for a good reason.
In trying to figure out how to color the above picture (which for me is fairly complicated since it involves a lot of different characters) I ran across Farlow Studios which features the work of a Filipino artist Jeremy Farlow. I not only have trouble with pure color theory, but half of my battle is just simply learning how photoshop and other similar programs work and getting them to do the things I want them to do. This site, I believe can offer me some help. He does great pin-ups, and his work has a great professional looking comic book quality to it. He has some good tutorials on how to lay down flats and ink with the brushes inside of Photoshop, so it’s a good find for those interested in learning how to do comic book coloring right.
Edit: Here is the colored version of the lineart without the added calendar graphic. See the Women of Roleplay Calendar site for the desktop wallpaper.
Very NIce and better late than never! I was getting tired of looking at Jan even though we were in Feb. *Still waits for Rene’s cameo* Anyways I hope you aren’t as busy as we are in the hospital. If so, I R sorry! I know my little butt has been puked on, pooped on, and many more. Lucky you don’t have to deal with that as much as me. LOL
Rene! I know, this one is so late! Gah! As for Rene’s cameo, I have been putting various characters in the background, ones that I have taken screenshots of in the past, so who knows if they are still around or not. You and the other ladies of the calendar really should play more prominent roles in the background, though. Branwen was a small figure in the January calendar and Solar Maid is seen in the foreground of this one, too, so for future months I think I’ll try to include at least 2 of the ladies as ancillary figures. Work has been crazy busy, of course — its the winter. But you are right, I get away with not getting pooped on as much as you, I bet.
Hang in there! The winter should be winding down soon! 