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So my sweet las Azadeh decided earlier this spring that going to Spain would be a natural step towards becoming fluent in Spanish.
Who do we call?
Our man in Benidorm, of course, Nacho AKA Farlander AKA "you are very smart".

Nacho translated Aza's CV, arranged a job in a nearby bar and provided free (!) accommodation in one of his parents' apartments in down town Benidorm. He was furthermore very helpful in various matters, and Aza hung out with his family a lot.

I visited them last week, and there was much joy.

Some photos from a nice excursion to an old village in the mountains.
Azadeh, Lorena and Nacho:

Yours truly and the nice Benidorm beach:

Azadeh in an old sort of opening of some kind:


Muchas gracias, Nacho (and family)!

German tourist (doberman voice): "Waitress!!!!!"
Cute waitress, about to serve me some pie: "Sir?"
German tourist: "When will I become my food?"
Me: "I'm *not* with him!"

Well, you are what you eat

So, in case anyone's interested, here's the final version over at cgtalk:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=133=654220

Cheerio

Just got back my old Skoda Felicia from the garage...320 â,¬ for changed locks and repaired ignition lock. Included 170 â,¬ towing bill and the theft attempt has cost me almost 500 â,¬, which is probably more than the car is worth. I almost wish they had managed to steal it...

Any local company that deals with used furniture or antiquities, or an auction house, or even a company buying decendate estates, would probably agree to buy the lot for a low sum.
Then again, carefully selling the stuff piece by piece, to the right buyers, will give you much more money.

If this is important to you for some sort of spiritual fulfilment (the liberation from worldly possessions), then go ahead. If it's for financial reasons, then you should reconsider. The stuff you own is probably not worth more than a few weeks' work at some pub, and it's bound to hold a sentimental value much larger than that. Maybe not now, but some time in the future you might suddenly miss those old vinyls.

Good SSH, keep insulting him, he actually asked for it

Thanks a lot for your opinions, it's worth a lot in this stage when things are only half-done. Will change the elf's eyes, the misty magic effect and various other details for next update.

Loomy, great points. As I said, the values and shading and everything is pretty unbalanced and inconsistent right now.
Especially the forest part in your version is vastly superior to mine, and I'll certainly aim for a less saturated, less contrasted, more misty look.
I get what you're saying about perspective, and I was expecting you to come here and talk about more radical viewpoints and lower perspective But I'm more or less happy with how the perspective is now, not because it's got an optimal presence and drama going on, but because it's a more laidback, descriptive image I'm going
for.

EDIT: Quite major revamp. Check first post. Two characters still unfinished. I think the forest is now nearly finished, don't know if I can improve it at this point without having to re-paint too large parts of it.

So...c&c needed

Fleshstalker is gonna stalk some flesh

This is a picture I've been working on every now and then during the last months. In periods I've been completely sick of it, then returned to it with renewed energy, well you know the routine. I'm not used to projects this big, as I'm typically happy with speedpainting for an hour or two, so this has been a massive workload for me. Spent hours and hours looking for references, and finding far too few I've been happy with. Re-done parts, erased parts, moved parts, etc etc.

This is a slightly reduced version; the original is over 1200 pixels high.


It's still far from finished, as you can maybe see; at least three of the characters aren't done at all (the little fairy is half-done so far...), there are things to polish basically everywhere in the picture.
The lighting, brightness and contrast are not adjusted, so there will plenty of areas with different contrast and intensity, and shading is not coherent throughout the piece.
The "magic" effect also needs plenty of work.

Basically the piece is depicting a storyteller reading a book that suddenly projects an image of what happens in the tale. The tale is about a unicorn being murdered.

I've stared myself completely blind at this, so there might be some flagrant errors that you can tell me about. C&C appreciated.

With so many caps, it must be good

Has anyone mentioned Mods? He's made music for like every fifth or so game out there.

And really, most names in this thread are simply people you think rock, making this just another buddy-thread...
Yes, I'm just grumpy I haven't been mentioned

There's nothing in the original background suggesting a fisheye perspective.
A fisheye perspective typically compresses the visual field to include a larger scope of it, in the same time rendering the peripheral objects smaller.

In the background here, we simply see a long street in a typical one point perspective, only that it's slightly bent.

Even, that second picture reminded me of Rodekill.
Oh and is that a Blade Runner poster to the left?

Yo Chrille
Just bought tickets for Way Out West, the Saturday-only pass.
Bands ready: The Flaming Lips, Fleet Foxes, Håkan Hellström, Joan As Police Woman, Lykke Li,
N.E.R.D, Neil Young, Sahara Hotnights, Silverbullit.
Will be pretty awesome.

Good job, Blazej!
A thousand norse gratulations from me and my people.
Signed,
The king of Sweden

Congrats!

It's nice. Neat and clean comicbook scene.
The perspective on the roof of the barn has gone haywire, but it doesn't really matter. Also, the grass is a bit monotone; break it up with details and a bit of shading.

Hm, overall it's not bad for a first try. It looks as though you've used a postcard for reference, from the colour scheme.
The biggest problem might that you've mixed a lot of techniques; you've got line-art around the temple, some pencil sketching going on in the grass and then I actually don't know what to call the way you've painted those mountains. Furthermore there are traces of effects/filters/textures, which I think you should avoid.

Edit: Added a little simple concept to show some stuff.


This is basically a desaturated, cutout version of your background. Then I improved your composition a little, by doing the following:
1. Placed the temple in the precise middle of the composition. Either place it there, or along some of the golden ratio points (roughly measure one third from a vertical side and one third from a horizontal side and put the "main" object of your composition there.) Never put your main object almost in the middle, as it will appear disorderly.
2. Added space above the temple. Another thumbrule: Either crop an object properly, or leave plenty of space above it. Don't barely make it fit, as it will appear to be squeezed in.

The reason I made it b/w is basically to show that the background has a lot of potential, but you need to re-do the colours. The cutout is to get rid of all the different strokes and lines you've got, to let you settle for one technique and go with it.

Remember that this a first person perspective scene. So the low view point does matter.
With a character sprite moving around, it wouldn't really matter where you put the "camera".

Either way, that's a crapload of backgrounds. Looks boring as hell!