Copyright (c) Nelson Chu. All rights reserverd. |
How I made it: Sheeps
using Expression 2
Last update: 18.10.2001
To ease the management, I grouped the strokes into four layers, namely left body, left head, right body and right head. Divided up the strokes for the grouping when necessary (considering which patch covers which patch). Working with layers also makes subsequence work like shading or shadowing easier.
Then, applied some fills, and gave soft edges (new funciton introduced in Exp2) to the furry bodies.
I also changed the outline for the body to "dash" type. This gives the body a more furry feel. See, it's just a simple step if you're using Expression! ;-D Created a background layer. First added a simple rectangle with paper texture of "Demin2". Then, added an ellipse with a large soft edge to create a "spotlight-like" effect. Blending mode was set to "color dodge". Adjusted transparency as needed.
I also started adding shades to the sheeps and shadows on the ground too. All these were done using the airbrush strokes.
For experimentation, I tried giving the ellipse a Demin2 texture too. After dragging the ellipse around, I found that it actually softens the background too when the textures of the background rectangle and the ellipse are not exactly coherent. I liked that, and kept that soft background.
Now, I prefered making it a poster-like graphics. I changed it to a portrait format and made room for more elements for my composition.
Considering the overall feel, the yellow blob was also adjusted.
I wanted to have some flowers flying around. For this, I used Yuki's "Spring Flower" strokes (thanks Yuki!!) found at the Expression User's Page. Now you see the power of skeletal stroke again - it's just four strokes and it's so expressive!!
Notice that the width of one of the strokes is much larger to give a sense of depth to the composition, and this was just done by a single attack with my Wacom stylus. ;-)
With the frame decorated with flowers, and some text added, this piece is more or less finished. The text was backed with a soft-edged copy of it. Currently (Exp 2.3 build 258), there is an error when you apply soft edge to a text object. But don't worry, Creature House says this would probably be fixed in the next release. Meanwhile, I get around this by copying the text to a path object.
So, that's it! Here is a large version of the final image.
Have fun with Expression! ;-D
Copyright (c) Nelson Chu. All rights reserverd.
