Okay, this isn't help (I'll edit some more sites in later), but I thought that these EXCELLENT MK6 concepts deserved a glimpse. I just ran across them. Even if you've seen them before, they deserve another look. If Face Zero (the artist's alias) were to come here, he would own this board...

These MK6 concepts come from a thread right here at MK5.org. They aren't very good for 56k peeps though.

there are some good links here- and i haven`t finished reading this yet. Somebody put a pin in it.

Sadly, those aren't MK6 concepts... those pics are of characters that are not related in any way to the Mortal Kombat universe. Nobody knows if he's even an MK fan...

Somebody just tried to pass them off as such. Check out his website.

BTW - If he did draw MK art, he would definitely own this board

get a light table, or if thats not available a light box.

Well I searched around a bit but I couldn't find many tutorials for designing your own characters. Your best bet with that is to be creative and find your own inspiration. No one can think for you, you must call on the deepest reaches of your talent, creativity, and imagination, then you will be able to create characters as they come to you. It is also helpful to take requests of original characters that other people want you to design for them. Designing things for other people often gives you fuel and inspiration for your own work. That's why people have idols and role models ;).

Having said that I will post the links to the two sites that I found. They aren't really tutorials, but they give you information on how to get your brain started:

Tutorial 1

Tutorial 2.

I also want to suggest that you read a lot of books. Read books about subjects that you want to draw. If you like fantasy drawings, read fantasy books, you like fighting games,pick up a martial arts magazine and read the articles and study the poses of the martial artists.

Rich Divizio came into the chatroom quite a while ago to tell everyone about some martial arts schools that his fellow MK people have started (Dan Pesina and Tony Marquez). Here are some links to their sites so that you can see some martial arts forms and get some ideas of what types of thoughts to put into your head while creating a martial arts or fighting character:

• Dan Pesina's new Kung Fu School
  
• Tony Marquez's site
  

There are also many, many martial arts websites on the net that you may want to look into, as well as looking at the actors of the games that inspire you to create a fighting character.

Okay I've said my piece. I am still working on organizing and pruning the post that I'm going to put up about color, vocabulary, etc. I have a feeling it's going to be very long and I'm not even sure if I'm going to post it in this topic. Well, until then, ta-ta for now.

learn your shape's.

My god, how could I forget this;

FARP-tutorials on drawing and writing. There's some CG too.

Bakaneko- Some of you know already... drawing and CG to be found here...

Nice thread

can any one give me a good photo shop tutorial or help me out them selves i just got it (version 6, and 7 if i can get my friend to set it up for me)so can some one point me in the write direction here i looked on this thread but nothing seamed to be fore photo shop 6 or 7...i may be wrong but please help.

Not to be demented or anything but, I think you would get much better results posting a new discussion all together, not to mention we could seperate digital art from "tangible?" art...

I unfortunatly don't do much digiart so I can't help with that, just a suggestion on your post though...

-Spart

sandspider Wrote: can any one give me a good photo shop tutorial or help me out them selves i just got it (version 6, and 7 if i can get my friend to set it up for me)so can some one point me in the write direction here i looked on this thread but nothing seamed to be fore photo shop 6 or 7...i may be wrong but please help.

Not to flame, but did you even look at the first page? Go to that page, press Ctrl+F (if you're on windows; otherwise, just try the Find engine on whatever software and browser youre using), and type in photoshop. Look, and in my 4th(?) post with over 10 links, about half of those sites have great photoshop tutorials.

And a little side note: I've only dealt with 7, but I hear Photoshop 6 & 7 are basically the same.

6 has bugs. 7 doesn't. ;)

Personally, I study other people's artworks and books on anatomy. Like someone else said, study your shapes. That's what everything is made out of basically: shapes. The head is an oval, the hand is a rectangle, and so forth.

As for Photoshop...it takes a lot of practice. It also helps if you've got a Wacom tablet.

i dont know if this has been said before in this thread but with me, the best way to practice is to copy draw, this is taking a drawing (like put on a mk game and draw the character select screen or anything) i started drawing horribly but i then started drawing pictures like sareena from mk:te, i just kept drawing pictures from that game and now im good at drawing, and if you are kinda bad at drawing, the best thing is photoshop, dont know if this helps but it helped me

Can any one recomend any SPECIFIC books not just types, im looking for anatomy, shading, and costume design, any help would be greatly appreciated.

nm, i got some i was lucky the guy at the book store new a lot . its funny in some of the books ive gotten i recignize pictures on the board hehe, its pretty interesting especially some of th goofy ones they chose .

originally posted by ]OMBAT

Viewing Pictures/Animations on Geocities (and other free providers)

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OK, every time someone hosts a flash animation or a picture with Geocities (or Tripod or a number of other free hosts), this question comes up. So instead of flooding the message board with "I can't view this" posts, not to mention the "click here and do that" replies, all the answers are in this one easy thread!

Users are encouraged to use the MK5.ORG uploading procedure whenever possible to avoid these problems.

(NOTE: It is much easier to view these pictures in Mozilla/Netscape, so if you have a choice, that browser is recommended over Internet Explorer.)

MOZILLA/NETSCAPE:

1. Right click on the Geocities link and "open in new tab". (Or if no link is provided, right click on the image location, hit cop
2. In the new tab - where it should say the picture is not available - highlight the URL in the address bar and hit enter.

The picture should now up!
It's that easy.

INTERNET EXPLORER:

1. Right click on the link (or image) and copy its location to the clipboard.
2. Open a new IE window by hitting CTRL + N.
3. In the address bar, right-click and hit paste.

The picture should show up! And don't ruin this by clicking on the link first out of laziness - you'll just make it so that you can't view the picture at all, and you'll have to start over again.

Originally posted by ]OMBAT

File formats for beginners - BMP,JPG, GIF

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Because sometimes I see people have trouble with file formats (uploading BMP's, etc.) Here is a tip for you guys that have trouble.

Power Desk 98 - http://tabmok99.mk5.org/pd98thisthingisdisabled.exe

This is a 30-day trial software package, I don't use over half of it. The only thing I use is the image format converter, and for some reason, that never expires! This is not a crack or anything illegal, this is how they made their own demo.

Just run the .exe file and from now on when you right click on pictures in My Computer, you get a nice menu like in these pictures:

Originally posted by ]0MBAT


Opinions On How Fakes Should Be Done

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I'm posting this to hopefully improve the quality of fake pics posted on this forum (and maybe others, to boot).

1) Made Up Backgrounds - I've seen some great ones before - but mostly I see what looks like parts of 4 different backgrounds just pasted over each other. Just using an original background would be better. Remember, you want fake pics to look real.

2) Made Up Characters - Again, I've seen some great made up characters before. But, if the average MK fan can instantly tell which character you edited to create your own, it's probably not good a good one.

3) Consistency - Having an MKII character pitted against an MK3 character in front of an MK1 background with the MK4 font everywhere and MKDA energy bars is annoying. If it's a fake pic of UMK3, don't use the MKDA energy bars for Christ's sake. Try and keep everything matching so that again, the fake looks believable.

If your fake is for someone doing an MKDA move in MK3, do MKDA energy bars and fonts really make sense?

4) Timing - Pretty simple. If the character's in the middle of a Fatality, the word "Fatality" shouldn't be there.

5) Wins - If your character is doing a Fatality, he should have 2 icons by his energy bar. The icons are different for different games, for MK4 for instance they use an icon of Shinnok's Amulet.

If your character's life meter is at full health, then it should say Flawless Victory - therefore, it's usually better to have the winner lose a little of his/her health.

5) Screen Size - Although there are some exceptions to this rule, generally you should try and keep everything the same size as the actual game. I've seen one where there was so much space above the characters in an MK3 fake, it wouldn't even be possible to uppercut them that high.

6) Miscellaneous - Make sure the blood from the energy bars is going the correct way (just play the actual game for a minute, if you forget which way it's supposed to go). Made up timers suck, fonts that are from the wrong game, or worse, made up, are lame. The fonts for the timer, energy bars, Character X wins, Fatality, fighting styles, etc. should not be typed in Courier or some font that never appears in the games, make it look like what the game would actually have.

This is my opinion and doesn't represent MK5.ORG - just my recommendation for what kind of fakes I'd like to see. If anyone agrees/disagrees, feel free to post it here.

----------------------------

Originally posted by ~Crow~

Good post, I HOPE that everyone will read this instead of just ignoring it. I'd like to add a couple of things to that list if I may:

Shadows: They aren't difficult to do, and they add to the realism factor. If you are using Paint (as most of you are) just go to "Sketch/Skew". First, I'd color the sprtie who you want to have a shadow black, the skew it to make it look like a shadow.

Dimming: The screen always has dimmed before a fatality has been performed, so doing this in fakes is always good as well. It can also be done with paint, using 50% black dots I believe.

Blood: Don't forget it, but don't abuse it either. Too much blood is as bad as too little. Use it wisely.

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Originally posted by JoRdAnMaN

I think they shouldnt be just copy and pastes because then they are just boaring. I have never liked any copy andpaste picture i have ever seen. When you make a fake you should try to make stuff people never see, something shocking, no just a simple head chop, because then people will be board with your picture. You should also give you own touch to your fakes, like try to make your own sprites, backround, effects, things like that show how good you really are at art. Making a copy and pastes shows no artist talent

Originally posted by timsmk

Just to make sure people understand the way the shadows thing works, I'll post the thing I did for SubScorpTile here.
Basic stuff:



Basically this shows the difference between stretching and skewing, because they are both in the same dialog box.
SubScorpTile got confused, so I showed this.

Basically you want to do the one on the left, go to:
IMAGE > Stretch/Skew

And then do what it shows in the picture.
Then colour the sprite all black, and paste the original sprite ontop of it and line up the feet .

Quite simple really.
If anybody doesn't get it, just ask.


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Thought I just posted this, so somewhere there's going to be a double post I feel, but oh well. Here, tutorial on "dimming" background in Paint.

Originally posted by VenoMark

I finally found the time to reply to this thread, and hopefully will people start taking my advice and giving me credit. =/

Custom Backgrounds: This isn't exactly my strong point; probably my weakest point, actually. Original ideas are hard to come by, and putting them into a decent-looking image is also quite difficult. Copying and pasting from some of the or every MK game seems to be the choice everyone makes to create custom arenas. It's not a wise choice in any fashion. It oftentimes causes people to vote against you for assumptions of laziness, along with unoriginality. I usually don't look at the backgrounds of images, unless they're the focal point of the image. When they are the focal point, I always take the majority of the points off of an image just because of the lack of originaliy, or terrible execution in the overall background. I try my best to stray away from custom backgrounds, but when I do create them, they are some nice tidbits of eye candy, I can tell you that.

Custom Characters: Around here, I've very scarcely seen any worthwhile custom characters. They're oftentimes weak pallette with a few lazy edits here and there, mostly the weak point of an image. One or two people, myself included in that handful of individuals, have the ability to create eye-popping original characters. We normally see edited Ninja, or ripoffs from other PC or videogames, or terribly executed custom ideas. I advise the newbies to take as much time as needed with coming up with their own ideas. Look at concept images from games, or through books or magazines. Take those works of art and add and remove things, only taking portions of the original artwork and using them in your image. If you're unable to come up with your own ideas, then settle for the unoriginal trade and ripoff some character from another game, but points for originality, obviously, will not be given.

Image Size: Leave the image its original size. Do NOT edit the size of an image in MSPaint. That is purely and completely stupid. The image always becomes pixelated and hideously ugly. I always grade harshly when an image is horribly resized, and usually don't even look at anything else because the ugliness of the background just draws my complete attention away from everything else in the image. Edit the size only slightly in Windows Picture Editor (the needed resize is usually only one tap of the plus sign), or PaintShop Pro. Resizing the image past 200% will usually distort the image greatly, causing blurriness. Sharpening the image sometimes helps that, but rarely, and only is small and barely noticeable cases of blurriness.

Everything Else: If you're going to create your own blood, only do so if you're good at it, and don't rip off someone else's style without crediting them.

If you choose to have a character win a match, be fair and take a portion of his or her health away. It shows either lack of talent or laziness, and neither of those gets any points from me. Also, if a character is still performing a fatality, don't throw in the 'Fatality' logo. A 'So-and-so Wins' logo may be necessary, but only if the victor is almost completed with performing the fatality. The victor should also have two dragon or amulet or other specified icon if he or she is performing a fatality. A win (WINS: 01, not WINS: 00) is also given to the character if a fatality is being performed.

The timer should not be at 99, ever. I know the timer in MKII and other MK installments remains at 99 when the timer is shut off, but doing so in an original image just shows signs of laziness.

I'll add more tips and tricks as I think of them. If you take my, or anyone's, advice in these tutorials, give me/them credit. I hate it when I see people ripping off my lifebar styles, or my text styles, or anything that is obviously a rip off of my overall technique, and credit is not given to me. It shows you have no respect for that person, and usually pisses the main person off quite a bit, especially me. And, trust me, you don't want me pissed off at you.


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Originally posted by noob_sareena

oh i also have some advice to some newbies to paint, when doing a picture, and its on a background with a platform, like the dead pool, when you do the shadow, cut it in half so it looks like it is over the playform, and to give it more of a realistic value, color the shadow a dark gray then pure black.

Er... ?

I thought we had a whole thread dedicated to that uh... 'Fake' art?

er... yeah...

-Spart

Instead of wasting money on books try just taking a sketchbook, a good pencil and an observant eye to draw whatever you see outside. People watch, and draw them. Take in the simple poses and just sketch, books can only teach so much, but actually going out and seeing your subjects will do wonders.

For photoshop, one cannot live without the photoshop bible. The CS version is comming out soon.