The Dark Knight

I was messing around today and I produced this:

Pencil

Then I scanned it in and finished up with some color [Photoshop]:

Color

Then I added some rain and its looking alright [More Photoshop]:

Rain

What do you guys think?
Suggestions? Comments?

Put them below.

(If you want me to change the links to the actual pictures, just mention it in the thread. I figured waiting for all the pictures to load would be really annoying, so.)

rain is hard to cath on film or by the eye. Make it more blurry.

How about this:

Rain v.2

This looks a bit more misty though.

It looks good, perhaps do as Ferret suggested and make the rain more streaky, and longer.

Yea, it sorta reminds me of the matrix....

Been tweaking it.

Here's the latest one ... I also just realized I replicated Keanu Reaves lips ... weird.

Your drawing was really nice, but it seems you lost the clearly defined values that made it work, once you colored it. It kinda freaked me out, because I just recently did a batman doodle that looked almost identical. Anyway.... lose the smudge tool, and define your values more. If your using photoshop, create an adjustment layer at the very top (layer, adjustment later, Hue and Saturation), and drop the saturation all the way, so that it turns grayscale. Now, you can switch this layer off and on, and be able to flip between grayscale/color. The values of color are what define an image, so when picking color make sure it works in grayscale too.

If you want to make the rain look more realistic, have the drops splashing on his shoulders and head etc. This makes it look like he's in the rain, instead of behind the rain.

Worked on it some more

By the way, I've barely smudged anything, the entire thing is mostly airbrushed.

I took out the rain, so people would stop commenting on it alone.

Meh, I liked the rain...

Looks good either way. :smile:

That's right, good job.

The latest coloured one looks kinda cool. The pencil one looks awesome. The others (no offence) look like crap :razz: Though you've turned that crap into something good, good work!

The pencil one is miles better than the coloured ones in my opinion, and the newest one seems much too dark to me.

Rain doesn't usually fall from directly above, you have to take into consideration wind, etc.

Crono, as stated before, your pencil sketch is very, very nice. Very good lines, good sense of form and loose but clean shading. The color rendition loses the depth that your sketch has. Simply put, jumping from pencil/grayscale to color is quite a challenge, and takes some studying, experimenting, and lots of practice.

The first thing that people assume when using color, is that you use white to lighten the base color, and black to darken it. What this does, is leave you with muddy, gray colors that kill the hue of your base color. The important thing to keep in mind, at first, is that a colors VALUE is the most important thing in defining form. By this I mean, if you convert it to grayscale, where does it fall in the spectrum. If you have the values correct, you can use whatever colors you want, and the form will still be readable.

What I would do, is before you start painting, work out the base color scheme. If it's blue, develop a gradient of 4 blues from darkest blue, to lightest blue. Stick with these 4 gradients, and build the form of the object. Then, once the values are set, and the form works, work on blending colors adding details/texture, etc. Very last step should be adding the extreme highlights and shadows: white, and black. Be careful with these, and use them sparingly.

I had some fun with this image to try and illustrate what I'm saying here. Hope this helps. :dorky:

I think the pencil sketch is s**t. So, I'm not seeing what you guys think is to great about it past the sharp shadows.

I actually muddied the colors on purpose, and again, I didn't smudge anything, it's all air brush :smile: (if you notice, the mouth is a completly different shape in the colored versions.

And yes, I see what you're saying, Finger.

I'm not done with it, obviously, but, I just need to smooth out the color transitions on his cowl and the visible parts of his cape.

And if the last one is too dark for you to see, its your monitor, I suppose I can make a brighter one, so you can see what it looks like.

Anyway, keep them coming, and don't be offended if I don't take everyones comments into consideration :smile:

Np Crono. Just trying to give some perspective that has helped me in my attempts at understanding color....no pressure to change previous pics, just food for thought.

You know, I've never really used the airbrush tool. (buries head in photoshop again)

You should, its a magnificent thing. :smile:

Looks like batman :biggrin:

No, really?! Now you mention it, the evil French moustache does give it away

G.Ballblue said:
Looks like batman :biggrin:

You know what? It does look like Batman (also known as The Dark Knight)...

The rain shouldnt be so condensed. Try it with fewer drops and more space between them.

I got rid of the rain.

The last picture I posted was this

and I've worked on it some more ... I'm really trying to find a nice way to mold it into a backdrop of some kind ... maybe Mr. Finger would be so kind to give some help in that area :smile:

I would put some dancing ponies behind him, and maybe a rainbow.

That's what I was thinking, but for some reason Gotham seemed like a better idea. (I meant on technique, smartass, after I had started and shown something) :smile:

:razz: For Gotham, I think a silhouette of buldings would work....anything very detailed would distract from the character.

... actually, thats a really good idea ...