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Like I've said 1,000 times before (or is it a million), stick to the issues, not the egos and personalities. Discuss the issues in a spirit of mutual willingness to teach and learn, and check your egos at the door. You'll be surprised at how few "situations" arise when you treat discussions that way. Just because someone challenges what you say doesn't mean you're dumb or a bad person, and is certainly no reason to get angry and stomp off.
If you don't agree with the issues, address them directly with facts and rational arguments. Don't immediately go into attack mode and get angry at the person, stick to the issues.
And when you find yourself saying "I hate to admit it...", or "strangely, I agree", ask yourself WHY it's so difficult. If you're sticking to the issues and not the egos, it shouldn't be an issue. The best approach will reveal itself after a healthy discussion, and biases dissolve away.
Like I said, maybe I'm an idiot to still cling to this, but I really have faith that forums like this can evolve into places where a healthy discussion of the issues is the norm, and personal attacks and childish fighting are non-existent.
Please, folks, stick to the issues.....
No apologies needed guy/gals.
Again, thanks for the additional input Joe.
I spent a few hours "Virtual" browsing shelves at Amazon.com. And through a few revisions of the cover my wife ran it through several of her writer's groups and past a number of members of the target audience.
As for post, I cannot afford photoshop. I have a few cheapies for photo editing that do a number of things decently. I have heard of Gimp, but I have not tried it yet. The cover I have shown here is straight out of Carrara, no post.
Also, I would be grateful for a link to what you feel is a good tutorial on lighting. I have been roaming youtube. Also, I bought PhilW's DVD, but I have misplaced it :(
Thanks,
Shawn.
God bless.
Gee Joe, I am just trying to be nice to you.
Okay.....okay, to be honest, I didn't really mean to be nice to you.
It was a lapse on my part.
Calm down.
Life is good.
HI Misticwolf :)
The Gimp is free, and it does much of what Photoshop does,. Multilayer images, and bending modes. (so, go.. download it .)
I agree with the advice you've been given here, (layout, depth, focus, fonts) etc.. and it's all good if you take it as "no malice intended".
and you're asking for "open and critical appraisal" of where it stands now, and how to improve it.
I think there's a lot you can do to it in Carrara, before you look at post work.
As for lighting tutorials, both Dimension Theory, and Sub 7th have done good Video tutorials which cover setting up lighting in Carrara.
and these are on-line ether at http://www.youtube.com/user/dimensiont at Youtube, or on Sub7th's web site, and linked to from Carrara Cafe. http://www.sub7th.com/tutorials/fruit/
The "Digital Lighting and rendering" book, by Jeremy Birn, is almost essential reading, and will explain a lot about setting up lighting in a 3D scene, and it also looks a photographic techniques like Depth of field, placing the subject, and the different types of photo studio lighting.
Also, Many of the post production techniques can be picked up through photoshop tutorials, and used in the same way in any multilayer image editor but...
While you can make a Good image better in an image editor,. . You need good images to begin with, and in any 3D program, that's down to a Mixture of Lighting and Shaders.
Also, rendering out elements with alpha transparency, and compositing them will help in the composition / layout, since you can adjust the position and scale of objects to focus attention on a specific subject.
Rendering individual elements, will also render faster.
the target audience and non-CG using people would probably give you better insight anyway! %-P
our views get clouded by the software.
I learn more about what is so terribly wrong about my videos from friends who just play facebook zynga games on their computers than anyone on the forum.
Okay, I WILL give an opinion ♡
(I usually don't as I am not very good at CGI)
The background looks like,a background
ie she is standing in front of an image, not in the scene.
is it a seperate render with shadowcatch plane?
if so I would use no ambient light on the scene and a distant light (or sunlight with full GI if you are keen) to create more shadows among the trees then a light in the same position for the figure on a plane shadowcatch, enable soft shadows to make it look less pasted on.
Excellent. Now that you've done the market research, and have decided on the purpose and goals, and developed
a content, composition and style for the image that you think might accomplish those goals, you can come to the group for input.
Personally, I'd ask people something like "Hey, I'm trying to attract young girls who my research has shown tend
to prefer _____, and I want my image to come across to them as exciting, eyecatching, mysterious and romantic. What
do you think, does it do that?"
And that kind of stuff can be answered by anyone, even someone with minimal skills. If most people see it as drab
and uninteresting, you have a pretty good idea young girls might also. If most see it as dynamic and with a
lot of emotion and mystery, and feel like they want to know more based on the cover, then maybe you have something
good.
Personally, I would steer clear of any discussion of tools and techniques. That's the easy part, and I guarantee that
14 year old girls couldn't care less if you use Gimp or Photoshop. If, in the end, you need some special technique that
might help make your audience feel a certain way, then by all means investigate. But don't get hung up on the tools, it's
really not important.
Well, that part worked then. She is supposed to be imposed in front of the forest.
Shawn
God bless.
Lol, I guess the difference is too small. the Caspian line is 26 point and the name is 29.2 point.
Gee Joe, I am just trying to be nice to you.
Okay.....okay, to be honest, I didn't really mean to be nice to you.
It was a lapse on my part.
Calm down.
Life is good.
Yes, life is good. So is ice cream.
I've been using Paintshop Pro X4 for a while now and find it a very capable piece of software. It goes on sale quite often for something in the neighborhood of $40. If you decide to purchase it, I'd go for the Ultimate version. The Ultimate version comes with some very cool filters. I use those filters often in my own postwork. Also, the warp brush will be your friend.
All of my Odd Girl images were postworked in Paintshop Pro X4. You can see them at http://cgandme.com/?gallery=the-odd-girls-project
3dage is right about Jeremy Birn's book on lighting. It is almost a necessity. It really gets into the guts of lighting. I found it very helpful in understanding 3D lighting.
I was taking Sub7th's tutorial on lighting but it now seems to be a broken link?
Shawn.
God bless.