Have you thought about ever doing a step by step video/tutorial on how you make skins? Or record your process? I'm trying to start doing skins but there's a lot of stuff I don't understand that the site's tutorial doesn't really explain and speed paints aren't exactly great to look for answers, so I was wondering if you would ever do something of the sort, it would be cool
Iām kinda dumb and terribad at video recording but I can totes make a process with some screenies :0 Hopefully the following helps a bit. There is gonna be an assumption of basic knowledge on layers and whatnot just fyi! Perhaps someday Iāll actually record myself making a skin if I donāt get distracted and/or forget lol.
1) This is pretty much how I start my layers. I donāt change much from the default skin file provided by FR other than adding a mask to the skin folder so I donāt draw outside of the lines and then a gray overlay on top of the base just so itās easier for me to see my sketch. I use bright colors like blue and pink to help me differentiate details. I turn off the clip lines/shadow as I donāt wanna see those atm.
The layer that says āAccentā is where I start my sketch.
If Iām making a skin for a particular dragon, Iāll often have them added in the file (note the hidden layer above the gray box). To do so, I save out a transparent version of the dragon and blow it up to 700px in waifu2x or something. Then I bump it up to 750px so it fits in the skin file. Itāll be a lil blurry but itās good enough.
2) Next is line art - I have 2 layers for this skin: one for the jacket and another for the knuckle dusters and chains. Personally I like to close off all gaps in my line art, including drawing on the edges as you can see on the top of the collar by the wings or the gap formed by the hair on the midsection. This is just something I prefer doing as I find it makes my coloring less messy and annoying later on. But you can do it however itās most comfortable.
At this stage, Iāll also either zoom out to 50% or resize to 50%, whichever works because itās important to remember that the file size is 750 while the actual size youāll have to save out will be 350 - details will shrink so make sure what youāre drawing will show up appropriately.
3) Now onto colors. Since I closed the gaps in the line art, I just fill bucket everything. For this skin, I drew the jacketās colors on one layer because Iām trash and have 1 braincell but you can use as many layers as you need. In this case, the overlay layer was for extra saturation and the layer above that was for the black stripes. Be sure to clip additional color layers onto your base color so you keep things tidy and avoid coloring beyond the lines.
Again donāt forget to resize or zoom out to make sure your skin is looking as it should!
4) Finally I do some recoloring of the line art - in this case mostly the arm of the jacket. I lock the line art layer and go over it with colors darker than the surrounding colors - up to preference here. I donāt usually change the very edges just because I prefer a darker color there personally and my default is black. Itās also totally ok to have darker line art - again up to you.
Then I turn on the clip lines/shadow since you have to make sure those show up in the final piece. Clip lines is usually set to normal but I change it to multiply because I feel it turns out better for recoloring. When I recolor, I try to match the colors of the skin while also making sure itās dark enough to be seen. Same goes for shadows.
*If you ever get a skin rejected, itāll usually be how visible you make the original shadows and line art. Thereās not really a hard rule on what counts as āpassingā since itās up to staff but I try to make it obviously visible without ruining my skin. So here you can still see the belly scales for example, but itās not so pronounced that it takes away from the jacket. Itās a lil uggo imo but it is what it is.
*Something to note when you color: be careful how dark you make your base colors! Too dark and you wonāt be able to see the clip lines/shadow very well in the future. Note how the collar of the jacket is light enough that the shadows and lines beneath are still visible.
This is how my clip lines/shadow layers look on normal mode so you can see what colors I made them. Play around with the values to make sure you achieve some balance between your skin looking good while still showing off the base lines and shadows of the dragon. I used pink and blue here since it matched well with the skin. By default, the lines and shadows are gray and if you donāt recolor those, your skin will end up looking muddy.
*Other than recoloring, do not touch the clip lines/shadows at all. Do not edit them or erase them otherwise thatās a quick ticket to rejection.
5) Finally, turn off everything but your accent folder and save that sucker out and resize to 350px. At this point you can test it on your actual dragon by either pasting the skin onto a pic of the dragon or by using FR Tools. Reminder that you should not use/mention FR Tools on the official site cuz staff doesnāt like it. However on FR Tools you can also test the coverage of your skin when you select āupload skin.ā Less than 30% and itās an accent. Above that and itās a skin. Thereās other ways to test coverage but FRās gimp tutorial sucks and is outdated and I donāt have photoshop so lol.
*I often go through several iterations of a skin just in case I see weird flaws or missing details. Testing is very important once you finish as major changes to your skin after submission is not a fun process so be sure to get it all squared away the first time.
^ Your final product should look like this: transparent png (32bit) at 350px.
*Now this was the technical side of making skins using the tools at hand. If you have further questions I didnāt cover here, pls do feel free to ask! Iām no expert by any means but I can impart what Iāve learned after making a few.
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