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Sands Guide to Starting GFX
Topic Started: Oct 24 2008, 06:30 PM (93 Views)
Sandmanxx23
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I have seen many GFXers have trouble understanding two important concepts in a Graphic, Depth and Flow. I will explain both concepts below; I will also provide examples to make understanding easier.

Flow

Flow is the easier of the two to understand. Flow is basically the direction you want your Graphic to go, or in other words, the direction your Focal Point (the point you want people to focus on). Let’s take an example below:

Posted Image
You can see the direction that the focal (the guy in the middle) is going diagonally. When I chose my render, I looked at the direction it was going. I built from that, so in this case, cabal was going diagonally so I built from that, I smudged and added c4d's/wireframes in that direction. Here is another example:

Posted Image
The direction is once again going diagonally, and you can see that the c4d's and smudging is in that direction. Basically you should keep in mind that in order to make your graphic have flow, you must build from a certain direction(the direction of the focal is highly suggested, but I'm trying to get you to understand the concept of flow), you should smudge, add c4d's, effects etc, in that direction.

Depth

Depth is basically making your focal point easier to focus on. There are many ways to add depth, but the three most popular techniques, and the ones I use, will be the ones I will list. Using the blur tool to blur out things that distract the viewer of your GFX from your focal point, and you can use the sharpen tool to sharpen bits around your focal point to stand out. Thirdly, you can use the burn tool to add more depth around your focal point as well. For the blur and sharpen tool, I suggest a 30 PX soft brush with 33% strength. For the burn tool, 45 PX soft brush with the Range set to Midtones and the Exposure set to 50%. You can see the difference in these two:

This is the signature without depth:
Posted Image
You can see that the focal point, ichigo, is hard to focus on. The lighting is really interfering and you cant focus well.

And this is the same signature, but using the above techniques mentioned, this is the version with depth:
Posted Image
In here it is MUCH easier to focus on ichigo. Ichigo also stands out, so the signature doesn't look plain anymore.

A naruto sig without depth:
Posted Image
Another signature without depth, you can see how plain it looks, and how hard it is to focus on naruto.

That same signature WITH depth:
Posted Image
You can see how easy it is to focus on Naruto now, and the signature doesn't look plain at all.

If you understood the above, now you understand both Flow and Depth. Good job and good luck :)


Also here is a link to some great tutorials provided by vA.

007 Tutorial By r1nk
Fifty's Venom Tutorial
Al's Blastoise Tag Tutorial
Al's Sprite Tutorial
Al's Sprite Tag Tutorial
Krav's Need For Speed Tutorial
Shadow's Uzumaki Naruto Tutorial
Krav's Fallen God Tutorial
.Xin's .Hack Tutorial
Cloud3x's Haruhi in Space Tutorial Part 1
Cloud3x's Haruhi in Space Part 2
Edited by Sandmanxx23, Oct 24 2008, 06:32 PM.
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