New Interiors: Ladies of Ill Repute!

[Ibsen's Ghost]

Using nick_op's drawing here, I'd like to open up some discussions on place-names that might help (and encourage) people to work on developing and characterising our cities and settlements as mentioned in this claim here: CLAIM: AI Development and City Planning .

[Koniption]

I don't see nick_op's drawing in this thread. You might want to attach it somewhere in your opening post. Btw, I voted just now.

Koniption

[Ibsen's Ghost]

Ah, six votes already! Good good. It's looking like Serpentine Emmanuel, methinks, but it's by no means unanimous. I attached the pic in the post above.

[nick_op]

Hi folks. It's been a while since I was last round here. It would be fair to say that my life is significantly busier (in a good way) than it used to be, which has stopped my appearances round here. Also, a loss of interest in doing anything graphical caused me to stop working on this poster.

Anyway, earlier today I fired up GIMP and, for a laugh, decided to try to get it to open a .psd file. Imagine my surprise when it worked! After getting my tablet to work with GIMP, I decided to finish off this poster that I started months ago.

I'm still getting to grips with how GIMP works, but it's an easier learning curve than I expected. I've decided that perhaps my original concept was a little too ambitious, so I'm simplifying it somewhat (no fancy shiny metal bangles and such).

I've attached the result of my experiments, I'd be grateful for any feedback offered. I've not considered the type of background yet, but I'm assuming you'd be wanting it as a paper poster?

[Koniption]

Looks good to me. The only thing that seems kind of off, is the hand that has the "come to me" gesture pose. It's shadowing makes me see a skeleton's hand, like the hand is anorexic, or something.

Koniption

[Ibsen's Ghost]

Yeah, I guess so. It's not very noticeable though. I wonder if it's possible to give her lizard's skin and a tail...?

Nice to see you again, nick_op!

[nick_op]

Thanks IG!

After several hours of wrangling with The GIMP, I finally managed to get my graphics tablet working consistently. I've toned down the shading on the hand about as far as I currently can. I don't have an up to date version with separate layers, which means that the midtones, shadows and highlights are all baked in together, making it fairly tricky to edit. I think I've managed to achieve a reasonable lessening of the skeletal look, however.

The underwear has undergone a re-design. I've also added a cloud effect to the background to break it up subtly, and got rid of an error that caused the figure's skin to be orange in some places (let's face it, fake tan is not a good look. ).

My question is this: what next? I imagine you'll want some kind of text on it. The background could probably do with being made to look more like paper. IG and I had a discussion a while back that ended up in us deciding not to put a head on the figure to make it seem impersonal - is this still what you want?

It would be possible to add lizard skin and a tail - I've never painted scales before, though, so I imagine it would be rather time consuming. I can have a look into it, but no promises. Thinking about it, I'd likely have to start again, since as mentioned above I no longer have a version of the figure without the out of whack left leg (see the image in the first post!).

So, any thoughts?

Edit: Thinking about it, the metal parts higher up on the figure look a little cumbersome, so I'll probably make them more like the waistband/belt.

[Koniption]

The hand looks better, for sure. Everything looks a-ok to me now. I like the new underwear design, too - it compliments the flowing of the rest of what she wears.

Koniption

[nick_op]

It seems I was wrong about my tablet now working flawlessly with GIMP. It seems that one session earlier was a fluke, as I can no longer get it to function at all as it should. One of two things happens:

1. The cursor on screen only moves around in a tiny portion of the screen and doesn't respond to any clicking.
2. I can get it to occupy the entire screen, but it works exactly like a mouse - no pressure sensitivity.

I've tried loads of stuff - updating DirectX, tablet drivers, different versions of GIMP. It seems this has been a fairly common issue for several years with GIMP (or more specifically, GTK+ based software) running under Windows, despite several "fixes". I'll keep plugging away at fixing the issue, but at the moment I have no idea of where to start.

It looks like I'll be working on this sporadically if my previous experiences are anything to go by. It's a pity, really, since I've just got back into it. I'll keep you posted, hopefully my next post will have an update to the image.

Edit: It appears uninstalling and then reinstalling the tablet driver works! A bit of a cumbersome process, but it seems to force the pen to function properly. Hence an updated image has been attached. It's possible I've gone overkill on the jewellery, but I quite liked the idea of the wrist and ankle bracelets implying bondage or slavery. Let me know what you think on such issues. I guess slavery of none argonian races might be possible, if a little improbable.

[Ibsen's Ghost]

Looks great! I'd still like to see scales on there but I can appreciate the amount of time that would take.

As for text, how's this: 'Wanted! YOU, right now. All warmbloods are welcome at the Serpentine Emmanuel!"?